By Rachel L. West, MSW, LMSW
On Tuesday January 28th President Obama will deliver his 6th State of the Union Address. Join Social Work Helper on Twitter to share your thoughts as the event happens. Include the hashtags #swhelper and #SOTU in your tweets starting this Tuesday at 9 PM Eastern.
According to The Washington Times the President will cover issues related to income inequality including raising the federal minimum wage and extending unemployment benefits, something Congress has failed to act on since returning from the holiday recess. Going into the State of the Union it should be noted that in 2013 Congress hit an all time low by doing the least amount of work of any of it predecessors including the famous Do Nothing Congress of 1948.
In 2013 President Obama called for the minimum wage to be raised, nothing happened. He called for gun reform laws to be passed in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacres. Once again Congress failed to act. Comprehensive immigration reform, which seemed so promising coming out of the 2012 elections has also become stuck. Recently White House Press Secretary Jay Carney sounded optimistic about the House GOP moving forward with immigration reform.
“We hope the House will take action,” he continued. “We’ve seen statements by House Republican leaders, a discussion about how they were going to put forward their principles on immigration reform. And we see that as a positive.” (Source: The Hill)
It will be interesting to see what, if anything, President Obama has to say about immigration in this years address.
You can catch the State of The Union on any major broadcast network or news channel. I recommend tuning into to C-SPAN because they present the live feed without experts chatting in the background. The White House will also be offering a special enhanced version of the speech. Basically the enhanced version is a Powerpoint presentation that runs next to the live feed of the speech that illustrates the President’s key points. It is a good option if you are not near a TV but have a laptop or Ipad with you. You can find out about this and other information regarding this year’s State of the Union over at whitehouse.gov.
In related news the White House will be hosting its first virtual block of cheese day on January 29th. To promote the event they have enlisted the help of West Wing stars Bradley Whitford and Josh Malina. You can watch the video they made about the day, which co-stars Jay Carney, below.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/2JJGDieJ5Tc[/youtube]
For no other reason than it being one of my all time favorite shows; here is Leo McGarry’s original speech about the history of the block of cheese day. Enjoy.
[youtube]http://youtu.be/Vm9HZq53rqU[/youtube]
You can learn more about participating in the event on the White House’s Website.
Photo Credit: By White House (Pete Souza) [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
