President Obama characterized America's challenges as ""our generation's Sputnik moment"" while calling for broad investment in infrastructure and reorganizing the federal government Tuesday during his State of the Union address.
""We know what it takes to compete for the jobs and industries of our time,"" Obama said. ""We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world. We have to make America the best place on Earth to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit, and reform our government. That's how our people will prosper.""
The president pledged to introduce legislation within months to reorganize the federal government but gave few details. He highlighted confusing and overlapping bureaucracy as a major cause of the country's dwindling competitiveness.
""The Interior Department is in charge of salmon while they're in fresh water, but the Commerce Department handles them when they're in saltwater,"" Obama said. ""I hear it gets even more complicated once they're smoked.""
The president supported reducing the deficit by reforming medical malpractice, letting Bush's tax cuts for high income earners expire and vetoing any bill with earmarks, but warned against going too far.
""Let's make sure what we're cutting is really excess weight,"" Obama said. ""Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded plane by removing its engine.""
Obama advocated new American infrastructure without increasing domestic spending for at least for five years. He pledged to put a million electric cars on the road by 2015, give 98 percent of Americans high-speed Internet within five years, have 80 percent of electricity come from clean sources by 2035 and prepare 100,000 new teachers for classrooms. He said he hopes these advancements will double U.S. exports by 2014, in addition to creating new jobs.
""Half a century ago, when the Soviets beat us into space with the launch of a satellite called Sputnik, we had no idea how we'd beat them to the moon,"" Obama said. ""The science wasn't there yet. NASA didn't even exist. But after investing in better research and education, we didn't just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs.""
