The White House Blog

Watch the West Wing Week Here.

Here’s a quick glimpse at what happened this week on WhiteHouse.gov:

State of the Union: On Tuesday, President Obama provided his vision for the country in the State of the Union address. President Obama said our generation’s challenge is “to reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth – a rising, thriving middle class.”

The President looks to grow the middle class through balanced deficit reduction, education reform, comprehensive immigration reform, and manufacturing among others.

If you missed the speech or want to see the address again view our enhanced broadcast with easy-to-read charts, infographics, and statistics. While on our page share your thoughts from the Tuesday speech through the Citizens Response tool, which allows you to actually go line by line and share with others from across the country what touched you the most.

You can read the President’s full remarks here and listen to the audio here.

This week, in his State of the Union address, President Obama outlined plans to build a stronger America, including actions to help entrepreneurs and small business owners expand and create new jobs. This vision builds on the continuing work of the White House Startup America initiative, an ongoing effort to inspire and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the United States.

Just last week, entrepreneurs from across the country gathered at the White House to celebrate Startup America’s success thus far—and its two-year anniversary—by presenting ambitious plans for growing vibrant startup communities in Arizona, Colorado, DC, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, North Carolina, Nebraska, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.  

After achieving several early milestones in its first year, Startup America’s momentum has only continued to grow.  Here’s how:

Calling on Congress: In February 2012, the President signed a bill fulfilling his call to expand Self-Employment Assistance, a proven way to let states empower unemployed workers to start their own businesses. Then, in April 2012, the President signed into law the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, allowing small businesses and startups to more efficiently raise capital from investors, including through regulated crowdfunding platforms that the SEC is expected to approve this year.  And, just last month, building on the 18 small business tax cuts he has already signed into law, the President extended through 2013 a crucial tax cut for investments in small businesses by signing the American Taxpayer Relief Act.

This year, President Obama will continue to call on Congress to build an immigration system for the 21st century that meets our economic and security needs. This includes common-sense reforms to cut waiting periods and attract the highly-skilled entrepreneurs and innovators who will help create jobs and grow our economy.

Today, in a virtual Q&A live from the White House, Bruce Reed, Chief of Staff to Vice President Biden, answered questions submitted by citizens via Twitter, Google+ and Facebook about the President's plan to reduce gun violence. The “Open for Questions” session was moderated by iVillage. Check it out below.

Watch President Obama's 2013 State of the Union Address and share your Citizen Response.

"America is not a place where the chance of birth or circumstance should decide our destiny.  And that’s why we need to build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class for all who are willing to climb them." President Barack Obama, State of the Union, February 12, 2013

In his State of the Union Address, President Obama laid out a plan to build on the progress we’ve made over the last four years to expand opportunity for every American and every community willing to do the work to lift themselves up. But there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges we face. It will take a collaborative effort—between business and federal, state, and local officials; faith-based and non-profit organizations; kids and parents—to ensure that hard work leads to a decent living for every American. Read more about his plan below.

Reward hard work by raising the minimum wage

The President believes that no one who works full time should have to raise their family in poverty. But right now, a full-time minimum wage worker makes $14,500 a year – which leaves too many families struggling to make ends meet. A family of four supported by a minimum wage worker still living below the poverty line, even counting tax credits for working families.  That’s why the President is calling on Congress to raise the Federal minimum wage to $9.00 and index it to inflation thereafter, so that working families can keep up with rising costs.

Raising the minimum wage to $9 would directly boost the wages of about 15 million workers by the end of 2015, and a range of economic studies show that raising the minimum wage increases earnings and reduces poverty without jeopardizing employment. For a working family earning $20,000 - $30,000, the extra $3,500 per year from raising the minimum wage would cover:

• The family’s spending on groceries for a year
• The family’s spending on utilities for a year
• The family’s spending on gasoline and clothing for a year
• Six months of housing

Read more about President Obama's plan to raise the minimum wage here.

This week, the President delivered the first State of the Union address of his second term, and then brought his proposals to a factory in North Carolina and a school in Georgia, presided over a Medal of Honor ceremony, honored the outgoing Secretary of Defense, and hungout on Google Plus. 

Flying on the U.S. side of the U.S.-Mexico border and overlooking the Rio Grande River, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano tours the border in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Air and Marine helicopter over Clint, Texas, Feb. 5, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)

Last week, I travelled to San Diego, CA and Clint and El Paso, TX where I saw firsthand the need for more modernized immigration laws that make it harder for criminals and transnational criminal organizations to operate, while encouraging immigrants to choose to pursue a pathway to legal immigration rather than breaking the law.

See a photo gallery of Secretary Napolitano's visit

Over the past four years, we have dedicated historic levels of personnel, technology, and resources to the Southwest border, and undertaken an unprecedented effort to transform our Nation's immigration enforcement systems into one that focuses on public safety, border security, and the integrity of the immigration system. We have matched our success at the border with smart, effective immigration enforcement, with a focus on identifying and removing criminal aliens and other public safety threats, recent border crossers, repeat violators, and employers who break the law. We have also increased funding to our state and local law enforcement partners to make sure they have the resources they need.

Happy Valentine's Day to everybody, but most especially my wife Nita!  We got engaged a little over three years ago in one of our country's great National Parks, in our case the home of the world’s most famous Portuguese Water Dog (read our story here).  That made me a natural candidate to promote this great new video from the good folks at the Interior Department highlighting some of America's epic National Park engagements.  For those mulling locations for that most special and anxiety-filled popping of questions, I can't recommend them highly enough, and they hold up very well in subtle "whose engagement was better" contests.

When I first became Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, I made a list of my priorities for the Agency. Working for environmental justice was at the top of that list. Ensuring equal environmental protections for all Americans is the unfinished business of the environmental movement.

It’s a simple idea – that all Americans are entitled to clean air to breathe, safe water to drink and a healthy community to raise their families – but often, it is America’s low-income and minority communities that bear the brunt of our country’s pollution.

As a result, these communities are also hit harder by the many illnesses pollution is linked to – conditions like asthma, heart disease, cancer and strokes. Studies show that minority groups face a greater risk of having asthma, and once they have it, they are at a greater risk of needing emergency treatment. African-American children are hospitalized for asthma at twice the rate of white children, and asthma-related deaths among African-American children take place at a rate of four times that of non-Hispanic white children. Hispanic children -- especially of Puerto Rican descent -- also face higher rates of asthma.

Dirty air, polluted water and contaminated lands not only put families at higher risks of serious and potentially costly diseases – they also discourage new developments and new jobs. Poison in the ground often means poison in the economy. Limiting the economic possibilities of low-income and minority communities only makes it harder to break the cycle of poverty.

The Nation increasingly relies on the Internet to run the systems that light our houses, provide gas for our cars, and ensure our water is safe to drink. Collectively, these diverse systems represent our cyber critical infrastructure. Linking our critical infrastructure to the Internet brings considerable benefits, but our daily reliance on this critical infrastructure means that we are vulnerable to disruptions in our ability to use it. Unfortunately, the threats against our cyber critical infrastructure are numerous, ranging from sophisticated nation states to common criminals.

The government’s senior-most civilian, military, and intelligence professionals all agree that inadequate cybersecurity within this critical infrastructure poses a grave threat to the security of the United States.  Most recently, we have seen an increased interest in targeting public and private critical infrastructure systems by actors who seek to threaten our national and economic security. Along with dissuading their actions, we must better protect the critical systems that support our way of life.

Because of the importance of our cyber critical infrastructure, and the seriousness of the threats, the President issued an Executive Order yesterday directing federal departments and agencies to use their existing authorities to provide better cybersecurity for the Nation. These efforts will by necessity involve increased collaboration with the private sector and a whole-of-government approach.