Victories: Claims credit for economy, tax cuts; pushes immigration plan
WASHINGTON — Capping a chaotic first year in office that has upended political norms and divided Americans even within his own party, President Trump at his first State of the Union on Tuesday night claimed credit for a booming economy, while calling for a huge new effort to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and legalize young immigrants under a plan that has infuriated opponents and allies alike.
Trump promised that providing legal status for 1.8 million young immigrants — well over twice the number currently enrolled in a program protecting them — in exchange for “a great wall” on the nation’s southern border and limits on legal immigration would help all “struggling communities, especially immigrant communi-
ties,” by limiting wage pressure on workers.
Years of “open borders” have “allowed drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities,” and forced “millions of low-wage workers to compete for jobs and wages against the poorest Americans,” he declared to the joint session of Congress.
As Democrats began to rustle in displeasure, Trump, in a powerful moment, pointed to two weeping couples in the gallery whose daughters had been murdered by “six members of the savage MS-13 gang.” Many such gang members, he said, had taken advantage of immigration rules to enter the country as “illegal unaccompanied alien minors.”
“As president of the United States,” Trump said, “my highest loyalty, my greatest compassion, my constant concern is for America’s children, America’s struggling workers, and America’s forgotten communities.”
“Americans are dreamers too,” he said, a pointed reference to young immigrants who arrived in the country illegally as children, dozens of whom were in the audience as guests of Democrats who sat stonefaced.
Sen. Kamala Harris, DCalif., afterward accused Trump of “fearmongering” by linking gangs and immigration. While Trump called for restrictions on family visas, Democrats strongly oppose any limits.
During an address that lasted an hour and 20 minutes, Trump noted some big victories he has notched during his first year in office, starting with a $1.5 trillion tax cut that slashed taxes for corporations and wealthy individuals. He noted that the bill also doubled the standard deduction “for everyone,” while eliminating the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act, which he called “the core of disastrous Obamacare.”
The stock market took an inconvenient dive hours before his speech, but has soared since he took office, smashing, he said, “one record after another, gaining $8 trillion.”
Trump boasted that the nation’s unemployment rate is at a 17-year low, and expressed pride in an unemployment rate that, among African Americans, he said, has “reached the lowest levels in history.”
Taking a page from Democrats, he said Congress should increase government investment in job training, vocational schools and paid family leave.
Notorious for insulting opponents on Twitter, Trump said he was “extending an open hand to work with members of both parties, Democrats and Republicans, to protect our citizens, of every background, color and creed.”
“I call upon all of us to set aside our differences, to seek out common ground, and to summon the unity we need to deliver for the people we were elected to serve,” Trump said.
A record 14 members of Congress, all Democrats, boycotted the speech, including Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, who said she could not “in good faith” attend an address by a president whom she believes “has launched an all-out assault on our democracy.”
Trump addressed a Republican-controlled Congress that has, with few exceptions, rallied around his presidency even at its rockiest moments. Campaigning as a populist, the president has governed by and large as a conservative Republican in line with the antiregulatory, low-tax orthodoxies of his party, even as he rattled some GOP-allied business groups such as the Business Roundtable and U.S. Chamber of Commerce who pushed back on his calls for tougher trade pacts and demanded immediate legalization of the young immigrants.
Yet the president’s unorthodox style and 39 percent approval rating, the lowest of any modern president at this point in his term, have helped create stiff political headwinds for GOP lawmakers going into this year’s mid-term elections. Still, Trump maintains a loyal following of supporters, and red-state Democratic senators facing re-election have tread lightly with him, while their party’s base has lurched into full “resistance.”
During his address, Trump took credit for eliminating “more regulations in our first year than any administration in the history of our country,” and, in fact, has shocked environmental organizations by the aggressiveness of his administration’s effort to dismantle protections for public lands, pollution controls, public safety and other regulations.
Trump said a big priority will be reducing the price of prescription drugs and called on Congress to allow patients access to experimental drugs. “Prices will come down substantially, watch,” Trump vowed. He promised to end “unfair trade deals,” saying “the era of economic surrender is over.”
Indeed, in asking Congress to approve a $1.5 trillion effort to rebuild the nation’s roads, bridges and other public infrastructure, Trump, a New York real estate developer, called for stripping down legal constraints on the permitting process. “We built the Empire State Building in just one year,” Trump said, calling it “a disgrace that it can now take 10 years just to get a permit approved for a simple road.”
Trump said “where appropriate,” the effort should include state participation and private-sector investment, leading to a charge by Democrats that Trump wants state and local governments and the private sector to put up the vast majority of the money.
He also claimed he had carried out his promise to “extinguish” the Islamic State terrorist group known as ISIS whose territorial gains in Iraq and Syria had plagued the Obama administration. Trump declared that the United States and its allies have freed “very close to 100 percent of the territory” that the group had held.
Trump announced that the prison at Guantanamo Bay would remain open and that he has eliminated “artificial timelines” in Afghanistan, saying, “We no longer tell our enemies our plans,” a swipe at the previous administration’s announced efforts to withdraw from the nation’s longest war.
On North Korea, where his past saber-rattling has raised alarms of nuclear war, Trump said North Korea’s “reckless pursuit of nuclear missiles could very soon threaten our homeland.”
“Complacency and concession only invite aggression and provocation,” he said. He outlined no further strategy on how to deal with the regime other than vowing not to repeat the mistakes of prior administrations.
Trump faced a sea of Democrats in symbolic protest. Many brought young immigrants as guests. Some wore black — at the suggestion of Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough — to protest sexual harassment before a president who has faced dozens of charges of sexual misconduct.
First lady Melania Trump watched from the gallery, near her guests, including smallbusiness entrepreneurs, MS-13 gang victims and an immigration agent who investigates gangs, and Santa Maria Forest Service technician David Dahlberg who helped rescue 62 children from a wildfire near Santa Barbara.
Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., the great-nephew of President John F. Kennedy, delivered the formal Democratic response, proclaiming the party’s “Better Deal” agenda of a “living wage,” paid leave, child care, affordable education and “a health care system that offers mercy.”
“Bullies may land a punch,” Kennedy said, “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.”