State of the Union: Time to work together

President Obama’s State of the Union speech contained a lot of promise for continued economic and national recovery, and we urge both parties to work with the president in achieving his agenda.

On Tuesday, in front of our nation’s top leaders, the president took part in the annual tradition of addressing Congress with a quiet nation listening in the background. Issues in the address included the economy, energy, education, immigration, infrastructure investment, simplifying the tax code and health care.

In a well-written and eloquently delivered speech, the president was able to address specific steps in overcoming these issues. He prefaced by telling a divided government that the challenges of the nation are “bigger than party and bigger than politics.” He called for the need to put aside partisan bickering and do the work that the American  people sent them there to do.

The theme of this year’s address was “Winning the Future,” and he laid out the need to “out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.”

For the first theme of driving American innovation, he talked about the continuance of government investment into research and development. He framed the clean energy debate into one that government can play a large role in — especially in the development of renewable energy like wind and solar. He proved the government track record of investment by mentioning successes like the development of the Internet and the creation of NASA in response to Sputnik.

The president also laid out the simplification of the tax code as a national priority. For example, he stated that some pay virtually no taxes in a system with one of the highest nominal corporate income tax rates in the world. Under his proposal, he would lower the corporate income tax rate while closing the loopholes that let some entities get away for free.

He also tackled the issue of long-term debt. For instance, he proposed a five-year freeze on domestic spending which would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion.

He also talked about the importance of addressing health care costs. He was interested in discussions about medical malpractice reform, something that the Republicans were arguing before the passage of the health care bill in 2010.

With all he proposed Tuesday night, we feel that the best interest of the country is for both parties to work together. We have on this board both Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. But we can agree that several reforms need to happen for the betterment of our country.

Let’s hope this first year of the 112th Congress is a productive one, for our sake and yours.