President Barack Obama walks to the Oval Office after returning to the White House last Thursday in Washington, D.C.Getty Images
Facing Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress for the first time in his presidency, U.S. President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech Tuesday may seek to drum up popular support rather than lay out a plan with any hope of bipartisan support.
Centrepiece of Mr. Obama's speech is a massive tax-hike proposal that looks dead on arrival.
The President wants to impose more than $320-billion (U.S.) in new taxes on the nation's richest over the next decade and spend it on cuts and credits for the working middle class whose incomes have declined despite the economic recovery during Mr. Obama's six years in the White House.
"More Washington tax hikes and spending is the same, old top-down approach we've come to expect from President Obama," Ohio Republican John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives, said in a statement. "It hasn't worked," he added.
"It's not surprising to see the President call for tax hikes, but now he's asking Congress to reverse bipartisan tax relief that he signed into law," said Don Stewart, deputy chief of staff to Majority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, referring to Mr. Obama's recent backing for tax-cut extensions.
Hopes that sweeping tax reform might prove an area where Mr. Obama and the Republican Congress could find common bipartisan ground receded as the White House leaked the President's plan for a massive redistribution. Tripling child-care credits, subsidizing college education and creating retirement schemes for the middle class will play well with the President's Democratic base but were widely dismissed by Republicans.
"The President needs to stop listening to his liberal allies who want to raise taxes at all costs and start working with Congress to fix our broken tax code," said Senator Orrin Hatch, the Republican who chairs the finance committee and, as such, will head any wide-ranging tax-reform process.
But Mr. Obama seems unlikely to give up on his efforts to put more money in the pockets of the middle class. It's a theme he also struck last year in his State of the Union.
"The cold, hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by – let alone get ahead. And too many still aren't working at all," Mr. Obama said a year ago. That was before the big Republican victories in last November's midterm elections.
While unemployment has continued to fall – in 2014, the U.S. added the most jobs since 2009 and the year-end jobless rate of 5.6 per cent was the lowest since Mr. Obama became president – gaping economic inequality continues to widen.
Still, in his weekly radio address, Mr. Obama offered an upbeat harbinger of his upcoming State of the Union speech. He said: "2014 was the fastest year for job growth since the 1990s. Unemployment fell faster than any year since 1984. Our combat mission in Afghanistan has come to a responsible end, and more of our heroes are coming home. America's resurgence is real."
Amid the pomp and ceremony of the annual address to both Houses of Congress, Mr. Obama is also expected to unveil popular proposals for introducing paid family leave and better high-speed Internet access for rural and remote areas, as well as making the first two years of community college free.
Less popular with the Democratic mainstream but more likely to win Republican support will be the President's expected push for new free-trade pacts. If Mr. Obama can get fast-track authority from the Republican majority in Congress, it will boost prospects for far-ranging trade deals with Europe and Asia.
On the foreign front, Mr. Obama may be hard-pressed to report upbeat news to a war-weary nation. The President keeps sending more and more troops to Iraq as that supposedly concluded war flares up again. In Afghanistan, the longest war in U.S. history may not be over.
"For more than 13 years, ever since nearly 3,000 innocent lives were taken from us on 9/11, our nation has been at war in Afghanistan," Mr. Obama said late last month as the U.S. combat role there officially ended. However, the Pentagon has already asked for an increase in troops assigned to Afghanistan in 2015 and the summer Taliban offensive may demonstrate that Afghan security forces are not yet capable of defending the nation on their own.
Nevertheless, Mr. Obama will deliver his State of the Union with his approval ratings enjoying a sharp upswing, although soaring consumer confidence driven by the lowest gas-pump prices in years may be the biggest reason.
The latest Washington Post-ABC New Poll, published Monday, put the President's approval rating at 50 per cent, up nine points since last month and the highest since last spring.
With a report from Associated Press