![]() economy began to recover that summer, although growth has been modest at best and the middle class hasn’t seen much benefit. Little surprise, then, that 85% of Americans around that time said strengthening the nation’s economy should be a top priority for the new president and Congress, and 82% said improving the job situation should be a top priority.Īs it turned out, the U.S. In a Pew Research Center survey conducted three weeks before Obama’s speech, 71% of Americans rated the economy “poor,” and 80% said jobs were difficult to find. “It’s the worry you wake up with and the source of sleepless nights.” “I know that for many Americans … the state of our economy is a concern that rises above all others, and rightly so,” he told Congress. (The Center will report data on the public’s policy priorities for 2016 later this month.)įollowing the late 2008 financial crisis, what had been a mild recession was rapidly turning into the worst economic slump since the Great Depression – a fact Obama directly acknowledged. We also examined two other issues that Obama discussed at length in his speech that year: health care and education. ![]() We looked at the three issues at the top of the public’s list of domestic priorities for 2009, as measured by a Pew Research Center survey conducted in January of that year: the economy, jobs and terrorism. We wanted to see what his priorities were, how they compared with the public’s priorities at the time, and what’s happened on those issues in the years since. Given that, we decided to look back at Obama’s first address to a joint session of Congress, in February 2009 – a State of the Union speech in all but name. Instead, he reportedly will use the address both to look back on what he considers his administration’s major accomplishments, and to discuss more broadly “what we all need to do together in the years to come guarantee an even stronger, better, more prosperous America.” President Obama isn’t expected to use his final State of the Union address Tuesday night to lay out a list of legislative proposals, as such speeches typically do.
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