LIVE from Capitol Hill: It’s the State of the Union Live Blog!

January 27, 2010  |  Posted by Danielle Belton

New Security Action's Live Blog of the President's State of the Union is being hosted by NSAction blogger Danielle Belton and New Security Action's Executive Director Tom Andrews. Overall coverage begins at 9 PM EST. You can also follow us on Twitter at NSAction.

10:23 PM: Thanks for joining us for our live blog everyone!

10:21 PM: President ends on the note that "We don't quit. I don't quit." Good speech, but ... Afghanistan and Gitmo were no shows.

10:19 PM: "The spirit that has sustained this nation for more that two centuries lives on in you."

10:16 PM: "I campaigned on the promise of change." "I never suggested that change would be easy or that I could do it alone. A democracy of 300 million peopel can be noisy and messy."

10:14 PM: President calls for Congress to end Don't Ask Don't Tell, praises a DOJ that has a civil rights division that acutally enforces civil rights laws. Apparently we've reached the full-on, feel good part of the speech.

10:12 PM: The wifi here is getting glitchy. I appear to have lost contact with Tom. Oh no!

10:09 PM: Hmm. We've called for an end to the Iraq War. We're talking about increased consequences for Iran. Talks with North Korea. Are we going to get to Gitmo in this speech?

10:05 PM: Obama says we'll have all our troops out of Iraq by August.

10:03 PM: Obama calls out Republican obfuscation as the party of no. BUT also calls on Democrats, who are the majority, to stop cowering and put up their dukes for once. I'm starting to like this part of the speech.

9:58 PM: Obama points out how clearly wrong the recent Surpreme Ct. decision on campaign finance to their faces. Someone sitting there in their robe didn't like that.

9:56 PM: More from Tom --

Punting to a commission to figure out how to save money.

9:53 PM: Spending freeze without touching defense? Tom's take --

The federal government SHOULD tighten its belt. Let’s start where there is the most FAT – defense contractors run amok. No – there it is – the president will take defense contractors off the table of fiscal responsibility. Relax. The cigars are being lit as we listen…

9:51 PM: Obama points out the whole "no money" situation. We has a surplus. We lost a surplus. We got more debt. We didn't pay for wars. Another reminder that we were broke before he even came here. "Just statin' facts!" he says.

9:49 PM: More from Tom --

The stakes of not passing health care reform… By the way, those of us in the middle class with employer provided health care will pay twice as much for our health care policy in the next seven years if Congress fails to act.

9:48 PM: President asks if anyone has a better idea to lower healthcare premiums he wants to hear it. I'm not going to hold my breath although someone in the restaurant I'm in shouted "Public Option!"

9:47 PM: Tom is excited about that the President is addressing health care --

Yea! Health insurance reform is in the speech!

9:45 PM: A shout-out to the First Lady who is going to tackle childhood obesity. Yay for Michelle. She motions for the applause to stop. The President explains: "She gets embarassed."

9:44 PM: From Tom --

Failing schools kills futures. Right again. As we have learned over the last seven years, successful schools need more than hot air from Washington to succeed.

9:41 PM: From Tom --

“The nation that leads the clean energy economy will lead the global economy.” A fact that is as irrefutable as the fact that Republicans in Congress will do whatever they can to kill legislation that seeks to advance it.

9:39 PM: From Tom on all that off-shore drilling, nuclear power plant talk --

More nuclear power plants? Where is the waste going, Mr. President?

9:28 PM: From Tom --

WE cannot allow the lobbyists to win this fight! Declares the president. Yes. And the challenge to Congress – I will send legislation that does not get it right back to you. Yes, get that passion working – challenge the Congress.

9:32 PM: From Tom --

Infrastructure. Yes. $8 billion is going to high speed rail like the site where the president will visit tomorrow in Florida. Good idea. But we have an infrastructure deficit of $2.2 trillion. Literally one quarter of our bridges are structurally unsound. Every dollar invested in these types of challenges generates several more dollars in economic activity.

9:28 PM: President calls for light rail and green jobs. Slash tax breaks for companies that send jobs overseas.

9:24 PM: President calls for a new jobs bill. Standing ovation. I have a feeling we're going to have a return of "pop-up Pelosi" this year.

9:21 PM: President gets some applause for tax cuts. Camera pans to the Day-Glo Orange shine of Republican John Boehner laughing heartily.

9:20 PM: More comments from Tom --

The stakes are laid out. The greatness of America’s past laid out America expects us to work out our differences, the president tells the chamber.  Well, the Republicans watching you in the chamber, Mr. President, did not get that memo.

9:19 PM: Obama admits that the bailout didn't go over very well. "I hated it. You hated it." Hilariously, camera shows Tim Giethner whom, as everyone knows, no one particuarly cares for right now.

9:16 PM: Obama still trying to find hope among our myriad of problems. Reaffirming his belief in our country's resiliancy. "Despite our hardships our union is strong." "In this new decade it's time this country get a government that matches their decency." I'm ready to hear how exactly we're going to get that!

9:14 PM: Obama opens with the seriousness of our problems -- "The burdeon of working harder and longer for less." "I know the anxieties that are out there right now." "These struggles are the reason why I ran for president."

9:13 PM: Tom offers the follow insider tidbit on what members of Congress go through to get those seats --

The Congressional handshakers now greeting the president as he enters the chamber grabbed these seats at 9:00 this morning. That’s right – just like hanging out for a good seat at a rock concert – these members spent their day camping out in the House Chamber to claim and secure one of the glad-handing seats. Will we see sleeping bags next year?

9:12 PM: The President kicks things off with a history lesson of the Nation's past struggles, contrasting with our current troubles.

9:10 PM: President begins speech. Rumor has it the speech will last well over an hour.

9:04 PM: Tom makes some points about the speech and those in the House watching --

It’s President Obama’s first SOU speech. But for many in the crowd he is addressing in the House Chamber, it’s the last speech he will deliver before for mid-term election  where their political lives will be on the line. Many of the voters who will go to the polls in those mid-term elections will be listening tonight.

9:02 PM: Watching the MSNBC feed here at Busboys & Poets. Hopefully their Internet will stop kicking me off!

8:57 PM: Some more preliminary thoughts from Tom --

There is an old saying – you dance with the one who brought you.

Well, millions of Americans from every walk of life in communities large and small brought President Obama to this dance.

WE did so because we passionately believe in the need for fundamental change in how Washington works – that we need a president who will fearlessly take on the powers that so often reign supreme in this town – the special interests that sock it to us whenever they finagle their way into another piece of largess from those who we elect or who they appoint to look after our interests.  

There are no more powerful special interests in Washington that defense contractors and their army of lobbyists.

They are able to secure billions of dollars of federal funding every year that even the Pentagon says it doesn’t want and that our country doesn’t need (and, by the way, cannot afford)

Last summer the Government Accountability Office reported that the cost overruns for the top 75 percent of military procurement programs were over $295 billion. A July Wall Street Journal story of the GAO bombshell that never went off in Washington concluded: “We are rapidly disarming ourselves, even as defense spending grows.”

In other words, they have misspent more in cost overruns in projects that are in the defense pipeline right now than the president is going to try and squeeze out in domestic spending cuts in ten years. BUT, they are off the fiscal responsibility table. No chopping block for them. They are exempt.

So, the president is reportedly going to include fiscal responsibility in his speech tonight and the need to reign in federal spending with a spending freeze. That is, unless you are a defense contractor. The largest ten of which reported that they spent $29 million to lobby Congress and the administration in the final quarter of last year.  The largest defense budget in the history of the nation, chocked full of items that have absolutely nothing to do with the national security interests of the nation and everything to do with the financial interests of defense contractors and the pork barrel political interests of Members of Congress will be off limits tonight.

For many of us dance partners the question is, why?  Apparently we will not have that question answered tonight.

8:38 PM: Tom's first dispatch --

Getting from point A to point B here on Capitol Hill tonight is almost as difficult as getting a  genuine health care bill passed by this Congress. Streets around the Capitol are blocked with barricades and red flairs. I had to maneuver around several such barricades as I made my way to the Hill for tonight’s SOU speech that is this neighborhood’s version of the Super Bowl, second only to the truly Super Spectacular Bowl called the Inauguration of Barack Obama a mere one year ago.

Then, like now, the air is abuzz with anticipation of a momentous event, an incredibly important speech by a young president and the rotors of a federal helicopter hovering overhead.

But oh how things have changed since the historic occasion  that rocked this part of town one year ago.

8:36 PM: Right now I've got my laptop up and running at Busboys and Poets in downtown Washington, D.C. Tom will be sending his dispatches from Captiol Hill tonight.

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