President Donald Trump will call for a ‘new American moment’ of unity and bipartisanship on Tuesday during his first State of the Union Address, selling his 2017 tax-cut success and arguing for his administration’s tranche of immigration goals.
‘There has never been a better time to start living the American dream,’ the president will say, according to excerpts released by the White House.
Trump will set up his recent tax-cut victory in Congress as a baseline for Americans to judge his first 12 months in office, saying that the ‘massive tax cuts provide tremendous relief for the middle class and small businesses.’
In what he has called an unexpected dividend of the cash infusion that businesses will see as a result of a lower tax rate, both large and small companies distributed end-of-year bonueses – a point Trump will drive home.
President Donald Trump will call for a ‘new American moment’ on Tuesday during his first State of the Union Address, selling his 2017 tax-cut success and arguing for his administration’s tranche of immigration goals
‘There has never been a better time to start living the American dream,’ the president will say, according to excerpts released by the White House; pictured is Trump’s 2017 speech to a Joint Session of Congress
‘Roughly 3 million workers have already gotten tax cut bonuses, many of them thousands of dollars per worker,’ he will say, taking credit for ‘the biggest tax cuts and reform in American history.’
As the president prepares to cut a deal over immigration policy with Democratic lawmakers, he will frame his proposals as humanitarian efforts.
But administration officials told Bloomberg that there would be scant mention of specifics.
Trump won’t emphasize that his call for comity applies equally to his plan to save the DACA program in exchange for more robust border security, including a border wall.
‘Struggling communities, especially immigrant communities,’ he will say, stand to benefit from a tighter job market as fewer illegal immigrants are included in employment markets.
Trump will claim his immigration policies ‘focus on the best interests of American workers and American families.’
Trump also is expected to avoid any mention of the Russia ‘collusion’ investigation that has roiled the White House for most of the last year, one that he has publicly called a ‘witch hunt.’
Multiple congressional committees and a special counsel are probing accusations, so far unsubstantiated, that his campaign aides conspired with Russian agents to swing the 2016 election in his direction.
The U.S. Capitol will be the scene for Tuesday night’s speech by Donald Trump
President Trump welcomed State of the Union guests, Preston Sharp and his family, to the Oval Office at the White House before the speech
But he won’t use the speech as an opportunity to lobby Democrats on his solution to the DACA problem, the looming expiration of an Obama-era program that protects from deportation hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.
Despite the president’s planned invitation for bipartisanship, Democrats resent the bargain he has offered them.
In addition to $25 billion to wall off Mexico from the U.S., he wants to end an international ‘diversity’ visa lottery and dramatically restrict extended-family chain migration policies – limiting green-card holders to sponsoring only immediate family members for their own legal status in the America.
Still, he will say that he is ‘extending an open hand to work with members of both parties, Democrats and Republicans, to protect our citizens, of every background, color, and creed.’
Trump will declare that he pursued his other successful policy pushes in order to ‘restore the bonds of trust between our citizens and their government.’
He will cite regulatory reform, renewed scrutiny of ‘unfair trade deals’ and ending ‘a war on American energy’ as ways his government has shown ‘love’ for taxpayers.
America’s first builder-president will also signal a request for funds – nearly $2 trillion according to some accounts – for infrastructure renewal.
‘We built the Empire State Building in just one year,’ he will say. ‘Isn’t it a disgrace that it can now take ten years just to get a permit approved for a simple road?’
Trump’s infrastructure wish-list also includes upgrades to air and rail travel, along with new tunnels, bridges, and port construction.
The White House said Tuesday evening that the president would also take credit for largely defeating the ISIS terror army.
‘I’m proud to report that the coalition to defeat ISIS has liberated almost 100 percent of the territory once held by these killers in Iraq and Syria,’ he will say.
Members of President Trump’s family including his adult children Eric, Tiffany and Ivanka, Eric’s wife Lara and Ivanka’s husband Jared Kushner, gathered for dinner before the State of the Union speech Tuesday
‘But there is much more work to be done. We will continue our fight until ISIS is defeated.’
Earlier in the day the president told news anchors during a White House luncheon that he aims to deliver a speech that will give both sides of the political aisle something to cheer.
‘I want to see our country united. I want to bring our country back from a tremendous divisiveness, which has taken – not just over one year, over many years – including the Bush years, not just Obama. You go back to the Bush years. You go back to the Clinton years,’ he said. ‘You take a look at that impeachment of Bill Clinton.’
While the president acknowledged ‘tremendous divisiveness’ in the United States, he said it stretched back ‘for many years.’
‘I would consider it a great achievement if we could make our country united. If I could unite the country. That’s not an easy thing to do because the views are so divergent,’ he said.
Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Joseph P Kennedy will handle his party’s response speech Tuesday night, saying that Trump is an example of ‘bullies’ who can’t ‘match the strength and spirit’ of Americans
Democratic Rep. Joseph Kennedy of Massachusetts will deliver the opposition-party response after Trump leaves the podium in the House chamber.
Excerpts provided by his office suggest that he will call Trump a ‘bully.’
‘Bullies may land a punch. They might leave a mark. But they have never, not once, in the history of our United States, managed to match the strength and spirit of a people united in defense of their future,’ he will say.
And Kennedy will have plenty to add about the political divisiveness that was the story of 2017.
‘It would be easy to dismiss the past year as chaos. Partisanship. Politics,’ he will say. ‘But it’s far bigger than that.’
‘This administration isn’t just targeting the laws that protect us: They are targeting the very idea that we are all worthy of protection.’