What Obama Will Say In His State Of The Union Address

President Obama is planning some bold initiatives that he’ll explain in Wednesday’s State of the Union Address.

On the soaring federal deficit, Obama will announce on Wednesday that the budget blueprint he files next week will contain a “hard freeze” on discretionary spending that lasts through 2013, an effort his advisers liken to the fiscal discipline families impose on themselves every day.

The freeze will not apply to spending on national security or on the agencies charged with protecting it, and it affects roughly one-sixth of the federal budget.

Other plans include:

• limit[ing] a graduate’s federal loan payments to 10 percent of his or her income, above a basic living allowance. At present, the yearly payments are capped at 15 percent of discretionary income.
• [increasing] the child and dependent care tax credit, which the president plans to nearly double for families making less than $85,000 a year. To do so, he will increase their tax credit rate to 35 percent of child-care expenses, from 20 percent.
• the creation of a system of automatic workplace IRAs, requiring all employers to give their workers the option to enroll in a direct-deposit retirement account.
• expanding tax credits to match retirement savings, as well as enacting new safeguards to protect retirement savings.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.