WASHINGTON — Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) delivered the Republican Party’s official response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address in camouflage heels, to remind those watching that she’s the Senate’s only female combat veteran.
“I’d like to have a conversation about the new Republican Congress you just elected, and how we plan to make Washington focus on your concerns again,” she said. “We heard the message you sent in November — loud and clear. And now we’re getting to work to change the direction Washington has been taking our country.”
Though Democrats pointed to Ernst’s conservative policy stances in an attempt to rebut her campaign’s folksy profile leading up to November’s midterm election, the former state legislator beat her opponent, former Rep. Bruce Braley, by more than 8 percentage points. She became the first woman ever elected to Congress from Iowa.
On Tuesday, she drew upon aspects of her personal story to make the case for the GOP’s economic sensitivity, saying that growing up in southwestern Iowa, she personally felt “the sting of the economy and the frustration with Washington’s dysfunction.”
“As a young girl, I plowed the fields of our family farm. I worked construction with my dad. To save for college, I worked the morning biscuit line at Hardees,” she said, recounting an anecdote about wearing plastic bags over her shoes to protect them on rainy school days.
While Obama touted the nation’s low unemployment rate of 5.6 percent and offered a variety of proposals to help the middle class, Ernst gave a different take on the nation’s gradual economic recovery.
“We see our neighbors agonize over stagnant wages and lost jobs,” she said. “We see the hurt caused by canceled healthcare plans and higher monthly insurance bills. We see too many moms and dads put their own dreams on hold while growing more fearful about the kind of future they’ll be able to leave to their children. Americans have been hurting, but when we demanded solutions, too often Washington responded with the same stale mindset that led to failed policies like Obamacare. It’s a mindset that gave us political talking points, not serious solutions.”
Ernt delivered her speech using slightly more combative rhetoric than the address given last year by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.). Then, the high-ranking congresswoman pledged that the party was “working on a step-by-step solution to immigration reform” and didn’t explicitly mention the GOP’s repeated attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Ernst, in contrast, challenged Obama to develop “a comprehensive plan” to defeat terrorists, after the president argued in his address that America was on the way to stopping the Islamic State militant group’s advance. The newly elected senator said the GOP would “keep fighting to repeal and replace” the health care law. And though Obama said Tuesday that “the shadow of crisis has passed,” Ernst painted a much different picture of the various conflicts the United States is engaged in around the world.
“You’ll see a lot of serious work in this new Congress,” she said. “Some of it will occur where I stand tonight, in the Armed Services Committee room. This is where I’ll join committee colleagues — Republicans and Democrats — to discuss ways to support our exceptional military and its mission. This is where we’ll debate strategies to confront terrorism and the threats posed by Al Qaeda, ISIL, and those radicalized by them. We know threats like these can’t just be wished away.”
live blog Oldest Newest Share + Today 10:54 PM ESTObama Omits College Sexual Assault From State Of The Union Address HuffPost’s Tyler Kingkade reports:
President Barack Obama didn’t mention college sexual assault during his State of the Union address Tuesday, an issue his administration has highlighted.
In an address that largely focused on economic issues, Obama chose to discuss higher education issues like the cost of a college degree, his free community college plan and simplifying the process of applying for federal financial aid.
The president skipped the chance to address college sexual violence as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) brought as her guest Columbia University senior Emma Sulkowicz, who has been outspoken in criticizing her school after she reported being raped.
Read more here.
On HuffPost Live, Howard Fineman and Zach Carter discuss President Barack Obama’s best joke from the State of the Union address.
HuffPost’s Sara Bondioli reports:
Rep. Curt Clawson (R-Fla.) delivered the tea party response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday, focusing on personal liberty and teamwork — along with a lengthy story about his college basketball career.
“President Obama just presented his proposals for America — pretty much the same rhetoric we’ve heard for the past six years. I’m not here to pick apart his ideas one by one — but to offer a very different vision for our nation,” Clawson said, according to prepared remarks.
Read the full story here.
Pfeiffer explained the White House’s thinking about releasing Obama’s remarks as prepared for delivery on Medium and rolling out Obama’s SOTU ideas weeks before the big speech.
“I do think the old way of doing it was obsolete,” Pfeiffer said, saying the White House takes pleasure in taking old methods of rolling out information and doing them differently.
“One of the things that is like the tradition of the State of the Union is, you go out, you give your speech and then you barnstorm the country… what we’ve learned is every year, the press attention… the conversation in the country… would get shorter after State of the Union,” Pfeiffer said, explaining why Obama went on a pre-SOTU tour explaining his talking points.
— Paige Lavender
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Read more here.
HuffPost’s Mike McAuliff reports:
President Barack Obama may have a strong message for the middle class and voters in his State of the Union address, but it won’t matter unless he and Congress first do something about the cash-flooded election system, Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.) argued Tuesday.
[…]
Five years after the Supreme Court ruled in the landmark Citizens United case that billionaires could spend as much money as they want on campaigns, Sarbanes wants to create a public finance system in which people get a small tax credit for political donations, which would then be matched six times over with public money.
“That means a donor is now worth 0 to the candidate,” Sarbanes said, arguing that a politician would then have incentives to visit people in living rooms, rather than catering to super PACs and billionaires. “It’s worth my going there instead of going to K Street or getting on the phone with a bunch of high-dollar donors.”
Read the full story here.
Last year's SOTU scored 33,299,172 viewers. (Nielsen only counts folks watching at home on TVs; no web streams.) This year: higher or lower?
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 21, 2015
RBG in the House. pic.twitter.com/gMhqO3e8L6
— Meredith Shiner (@meredithshiner) January 21, 2015
#SOTU is an important tradition in our shared political history, regardless of party. I’m watching tonight. Are you? http://t.co/Ehs0oBecis
— Madeleine Albright (@madeleine) January 21, 2015
President Barack Obama will be donning his now-infamous tan suit this evening, according to senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer.
The President's suiting up for the big speech. Tune into http://t.co/tmsUd5yh5y at 9pm ET #YesWeTan pic.twitter.com/FC8sKb8hda
— Dan Pfeiffer (@pfeiffer44) January 21, 2015
Back in August, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) went on a fairly extensive rant about the president’s attire. The interview was flagged by BuzzFeed:
“There’s no way any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday,” King said of President Obama on NewsMaxTV. “When you have the world watching… a week, two weeks of anticipation of what the United States is gonna do. For him to walk out — I’m not trying to be trivial here — in a light suit, light tan suit, saying that first he wants to talk about what most Americans care about the revision of second quarter numbers on the economy. This is a week after Jim Foley was beheaded and he’s trying to act like real Americans care about the economy, not about ISIS and not about terrorism. And then he goes on to say he has no strategy.”
Middle-class economics and ISIS, the issues King highlighted, are on the agenda for tonight’s the State of the Union address. Will Rep. King give us another glorious rant about the president’s fashion sense this evening?
UPDATE: Pfeiffer was trolling us. Obama is wearing a black suit.
— Julia Craven
HuffPost’s Sabrina Siddiqui sat down with Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) ahead of President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address.
Watch the interview below:
