the one struggling families and serious policymakers urge him to chose. the new congress is already starting to take up smart, bipartisan ideas focused on jobs and reform. but when we asked the whitehouse for con constructive engagement what we have seen so far is discouraging. we need to turn the page. the state of the union officers that opportunity. the american people are not demanding talking point proposals designed to get the base excited but not pass. they are hungry for substance and accomplishment. they want washington to get back to work and focus on serious jobs and reform agenda. they are ready to see more constructive cooperation especially on bipartisan jobs initiatives like the keystone infrastructure bill. keystone has support in both parties. it is an important piece of infrastructure for our country. and according to what the obama administration's own state department said previously, constructing the pipeline would support literally thousands of jobs. it has already passed the house. we are currently working to pass it through the senate. tle be on the president's -- it will -- desk before long. we see no reason for him to veto these jobs. but whatever he decide said we will keep working for positive middle class jobs here in congress. we are nat here to protect the president from a good idea. if the president is willing to work with us there is much we can get accomplished for the american people. we have identified several areas of potential cooperation like tearing down trade barriers in places like europe and the asia pacific and building jobs with tax simplification. and working to prevent cyber attacks. on each of these issues the president has previously sent positive signals. now we need his constructive engagement and we will look for signs of that in the speech he delivers tonight. i hope he presents bipartisan ideas of his own that can pass the congress that americans voted for. give us new ideas to prevent iran from becoming a country with nuclear weapons or to confront the threats proposed by terrorism or remove regulations that hurt struggling coal families. challenge us with reforms that focus on growth and raising middle class incomes. reforms that don't just spend more money we don't have. if the president is ready for a new beginning beyond canceled health care plans and overreach work with us to pursue an achievement that history will actually remember. it would deliver the common sense progress that americans deserve. so we welcome the president tonight and look to his address with interest and if the president is ready to play offense we urge him to join the new congress and play offense on behalf of the american people. >> mr. president, senator from illinois. >> tonight, president obama delivers his state of the unionian address to outline the plan for make life better for the middle class families and strengthening the economy. i have heard from both side with hard working families doing their best and businesses are more profitable but families are not seeing it in their paychecks. a struggle from paycheck to paycheck to pay for the basics in life. we have to ask ourselves what will we do about this? i worry the comments made by the majority lead suggest he is relying on faith alone. faith in our free market system. faith in the belief that if we have an expanding economy, which we do and profitable in businesses which we do, it will translate into a better life for working families. but this can be challenged because this is what has been happening in america for years. the economy has been growing, we have seen an increase in jobs 58 straight months but we have noted the working families across america don't see any change in their lives or income change. and we look at the reality showing the gap between the rich and poor is growing larger and larger. we could talk separately about the comensation for ceo's and corporations reaching record levels far beyond the excessives of previous moments in economic history. we are finding the people at the very top of the corporate ladder are taking more money from the economy than the workers who are generating the profits that they are responsible for. that is not right. the president is going to challenge us to get the free market system to good works and he is going to talk about specifics, things the average family can understand and appreciate. the earned income tax credit. this is an effort to see if you are working we will make sure your tax burden gives you a break so you can pay for daycare for the kids and make certain you can pay the utilities and the basics of life. i have joined with the senator from ohio trying to make the earned income tax credit available to more working americans so we can supplement their income as they struggle. the second thing the president will address is college affordable. there are critics for the president's plan but i think he put his finger on reality. we can no longer be satisfied by saying it is the responsibility of our society to provide education from k-12th grade. that doesn't reflect the reality of work today. in just a few years, more than a third of the jobs across america will require a college degree. what are we doing to prepare hat workforce for the 21st century requirements when it comes to education? we know what is happening. more and more students are getting deeper in debt, many dropping out because of it and those who finish and earn a diploma are saddled with debt that changes their lives. the president says let's move forward and make two years of community college a commitment in america for those students who are in need number one and number two meet the standards and that is graduation within three years. i look at the comments being made in criticism of this and they overlook the second part of the government's proposal. the part that demands the students perform in order to receive assistance from the government in paying for the community college. in arkansas and illinois and across america, there is a k-14 model and that is reality. 2/3rds of community college students in many states including my own, come to community colleges not performing at the 12th grade level and there is work to be done in the lower grades. let's assume the obvious, if you want a good paying job in the future you need additional training. affordable places to go is community college and we ought to make it a pathway affordable for every hard-working student. the president acknowledges and will acknowledges the reality of the housing market. since 2009 our housing market has been recovering from the recession. buildings have more than doubled. a lot of job for construction workers. home prices are going back up. millions of families whose value was less than what they owed in the mortgage are now turning the corner. but for many americans buying a home is out of reach. the president plans to reduce the fhh mortgage premiums that will help responsible americans buy a home. faith and good works by congress when it comes to these essentials. and the president is going to propose the healthy family act. here is something that gets to the reality of life for working americans. it will provide businesses with 15 or more employees up to seven paid sick days each other. and i would say to yourself what is the business going to do with people taking seven days off in sick leave? what we found is if the employer will stand behind the employees when it comes to basic like sick leave they will get more loyalty and better performance. that is a fair trade. it is one the president is going to propose this evening. i would say to the majority leader and those who share his position faith in the free market is good but not enough. we need to make sure we step in and have faith in working families and faith they believe improve their lot. if their struggle pay check to paycheck is lessoned we will all be better off. i support the president's message and look forward to hearing it delivered. late last night i returned from havana cuba with several senators and congressmen. in two days we had a number of visits with a variety of people in havana including government officials rodriguez who is the former minister of the cuban government. we had a meeting with ten different ambassadors from foreign countries to cuba and we met with a dozen reformers or opponents of the current task regime and individual meetings with ministries. this is an important delegation trip. important because starting tomorrow we going to have face-to-face negotiations in havana between the united states and cuba pursuant to president obama's december 17th announcement we are setting out to change the foreign policy of the united states as it regards to cuba. it is time for a change. for over 50 years we have been committed to a policy of exclusion. believing if we had embargos we could force internal change in cuba. the policy failed. the castro brothers rein and life in cuba isn't watt we want to see. but the president said let's engage them in a constructive way and open up the economy and the society. that is the best course to me. and this has been proven. when the soviet empire came to an end what happened to those align would the soviet union? they opened their doors to the west and saw what they could anticipate to be life in the future and made the conscious choice to move toward democracy and free market economy. i think the same can happen in cuba. one young man came to speak to us and got in trouble and he challenged the cuban government they put him on a big farm to work but he was determined to aspire to a better place in cuba in the future. he said to us what president obama's announcement has done is to pull the blanket off the caged bird in cuba. those of us who live in cuba are still in the cage of communist behavior but we can see out of opportunities and a future. that i believe is part of what the president's new policy is all about. we discuss a block aid and learned powdered milk comes to cuba from new zealand. half way around the world when there is ample supply in the united states. we are trying to not only open up the cuban economy to powered milk but to the power of ideas, the exchange of values the belief that if the cuban people see a better model for their future they will gravitate toward that model. the president is moving in areas of trade and travel as we hope he will do to expand these opportunities but we have to do our part in congress. it is contentious and spirited but it wasn't long ago we stood on the floor of the united states senate and considered establishing victimatic relationships with vietnam. we had lost over 45,000 lives in vietnam and said we should not have a relationship with what is a repressive regime in a country we concluded the war with. others with cooler minds prevailed and we established diplomatic relations i think to the betterment of both nations. let us move forward and not turn our back on the belief that the cuban society should be open, fair and made legit by the voters at the poles and believing we can work with this country like others around the world even when we disagree with their practices to try to reach the democratic ideal. the last point i would like to make relates to a motion made this morning by the majority leader. it was related to the department of homeland security and the approp appropiation bill. the republicans insisted we cover out the department of homeland security and not give it its regular budget. this isn't the way to run any department of government. certainly not the department of homeland security. why is it important to fund this department? you need to only look what happened in the last few days in paris to understand that the threat of terrorism to the world is very real. our first line of defense when it comes to terrorism is the department of homeland security. there is no excuse to be dealing with this continuing resolution to fund this department. they should have the resources they need to keep america safe but instead what happened is this: the house of representatives last week said we will only agree to fund this department properly if we can provide certainly writers and changes in the law as part of it. i will tell you the change that has been proposed by the house of representatives is not acceptable. the president said he is going to veto it if sent to this desk and i support this. here is what they came up with in the house of representatives. if you are familiar with the dream act introduced to congress 14 years ago it says if a young person is brought to the united states at an early age, parents making the decision to come here, and that young person grows up in the united states, finishes high school and no serious criminal problems and wants to go to higher education or the military give him the chance of becoming legal in america. that is the dream act. it has been considered and passed from the floor of the senate and considered and passed in the floor of the house but never in the same session so it isn't the law of the land. president obama a little over two years ago came out with a program and executive order program known as doca and it said for the young people that will qualify for the low if you come forward and register with the government pay the filing fee, and allow us to do the background background check, we will let you stay and work in america and not be deported. 600,000 young people have come forward. 30,000 in my state of illinois. who are these young people? let me introduce you to one. oscar vasquez. he grew up in phoenix, arizona. his mother and father brought him from mexico. he attended high school in phoenix and was a member of the junior rotc. his goal was to serve in the united states of army. he went to the recruiter and he said i need your birth papers. and he said can't you look the other way? and he said you don't have the proper documents and you cannot enlist. >> he went home and got engaged in another project which is the subject of a new movie called "spare parts". i will not give away the story but i can tell you oscar and three other students at the high school entered into a underwater robotic competition and completed with colleges like mit. and they won. their high school team won the underwater robotics competition. talented young man he said i am going to arizona state university without government assistance and graduate would a degree in chemical engineering and after his degree, he had a wife and a baby and he said i have to get right with america and resolve this issue of being undocumented. he decided to move back to mexico. the law required him to stay there for ten years. that is how the law is written and petition the united states for a chance to come back in. he was given a waver eventually and came back to the united states. and i will tell you what he did. he came back and became a citizen of the united states of america and the first thing he did was join the army. he was a combat in afghanistan and he came home after serving the nation and now he is working for a major railroad in the state of montonanonmontona with his wife and children. he served in the military but he had an a degree in mechanical engineering. he is going to be a job creator and builder himself. what do the house republicans want to do to people like him? deport them! mr. president, that is exactly what they called for. they are dream killers and that is not right. we ought to give oscar, and young men and women like him, the chance to succeed and the chance to make america better. mr. president, i stood on this floor over 50 times with colored photographs like this one by my side and told stories of dreamers. this last weekend i was in chicago and six of them came forward and told their stories. each and every one of them was a compelling reason to defeat this mean spirited bill from the house of representatives. the president will veto it if it gets to his desk but i hope we do better in the senate. i hope there are enough senators on both sides of the aisle, 60 plus who will stand up for the dreamers of america. this is a test. it is a test to see if we believe in fairness and justice and the value of immigrants bring to the future of america. the house of representatives just doesants see just doesn't see it. they are blinded by their hatred and continue to pass these amendments. let us stand up for the dreamers and all be dedicated to passing immigration reform. our immigration laws and system are broken. it is time for us to accept our responsibility and repair it. we passed a bill a year and a half ago in the senate. 68 and 14 republicans voted and sent it to the house of representative and for a year and a half they refused to call or consider it. our immigration system is still broken. withholding money from the homeland security threatening with the dream killing bills for many in america is not acceptable. i will stand here as long as it takes to defend the dream act and people like oscar to contribute to america and make it a better nation. i hope we get a bipartisan support for the house representative writers who have been branded unacceptable by the president and he will veto. >> i live look at the united states capital here in washington, d.c. in the final moments, a little more than half an hour before the state of the union address given by the president. before a joint session of the u.s. congress. here on c-span2 we will go to the floor of the senate shortly where senators will gather and then walk over to the house chamber for the president's state of the union address. >> under the previous order the senate will proceed to the hall of the house of representatives to hear a message from the president of the united states. [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] dhaka [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] [inaudible discussions] >> the joint session will come to order. the chair appoints his members of the committee for the president of the united states into the chamber, the gentlemen from california the gentlemen from louisiana, and the gentlemen from oregon the gentlemen from indiana mr. messer, and the gentlemen ms. jenkins, ms. foxx ms. pelosi, the gentleman from maryland, mr. hoyer, mr. clyburn mr. becerra the gentleman from new york, mr. crowley the gentlewoman from from connecticut ms. delauro and the gentleman from hawaii, mr. takai. the clerk: the following senators of the committee on the part of the senate to escort the president. the senator from kentucky, mr. mcconnell, senator from texas plrks cornyn senator from south carolina. the senator from missouri ks mr. blunt. senator from mississippi, mr. wicker. senator from illinois, mr. durbin, senator from washington, ms. murphy -- ms. murray. mr. leahy. senator from michigan senator from minnesota, ms. clube char. the speaker: please exit through the lobby doors. >> mr. speaker, the dean of the diplomatic corps. >> mr. speaker, the chief justice and associate justices of the supreme court. >> mr. speaker, the president's cabinet. 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