Obama takes populist economic agenda on the road in four-state tour

• President pledges to act without Congress in 'year of action'

• Speeches to focus on minimum wage and retirement savings

• Hopes social mobility spotlight will boost mid-terms prospects

theguardian.com, Paul Lewis and Dan Roberts in Washington, Wednesday 29 January 2014

President Barack Obama waves before delivering the State of the Union Address
on Capitol Hill in Washington. Photograph: Yin Bogu/Xinhua Press/Corbis

Barack Obama launched a tour of four states on Wednesday to press home the central pledge in his State of the Union speech to address the decline in social mobility, hoping the populist economic agenda will boost Democrats in this year's mid-term elections.

Less than 12 hours after using his speech to call for a “year of action”, Obama embarked on a trip to suburban Maryland to underscore his key pledge to increase the federal minimum wage.

He will speak at a branch of the wholesaler Costco, whose CEO, Jim Sinegal, is a major Democratic donor. The president will then fly to a steel plant in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to deliver a speech expanding the announcement he made about retirement savings.

Executive orders to raise the minimum wage for a few hundred thousand employees of federal contractors and create a new savings bond for low-income families were among a handful of limited, presidential actions Obama laid out in his speech.

He vowed he would "not stand still" in the face of inertia from the divided Congress, and promised to help rebuild a “stalled” dream of economic opportunity for all.

On Thursday, Obama will continue his tour across the country, repeating that message in speeches in Nashville, Tennessee, and Waukesha, Wisconsin.

However, the executive orders will have only limited impact in comparison with legislative action, and his speech laid bare how powerless Obama is in the face of intransigence from the Republican-controlled House.

The cautiously optimistic address set the tone for Democrats ahead of November's elections, when Republicans stand to increase their majority in the House and possibly even regain control of the Senate.

“The cold, hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by, let alone to get ahead ...” Obama told a packed joint session of Congress on Tuesday night.

“Too many young people entering the workforce today will see the American Dream as an empty promise – unless we also do more to make sure our economy honors the dignity of work, and hard work pays off for every single American. ”

But despite a series of limited new policy measures, Obama's anticipated blizzard of executive orders was less confrontational than many Republicans had predicted.

Instead, the president made one last attempt at persuasion: either for Congress to pass a series of stalled bills on immigration, minimum wage legislation and unemployment insurance, or for the American people to elect a Congress that will.

“After five years of grit and determined effort, the United States is better positioned for the 21st century than any other nation on Earth,” said Obama. “The question for everyone in this chamber, running through every decision we make this year, is whether we are going to help or hinder this progress.”

The GOP’s opposition to healthcare reform, and its role in October's government shutdown, was another theme that brought loud cheers from Democrats in the audience.

But there were also attempts to enlist the support of emerging Republican leaders such as Senator Marco Rubio, who was praised for his work on reform of tax credits, in a sign of where limited bipartisan agreement may be possible before the mid-term elections.

Despite a gloomy prognosis for domestic reform, Obama set out a more upbeat vision of US foreign policy, drawing wide applause for his efforts to end American involvement in Afghanistan. “Together with our allies, we will complete our mission there by the end of this year, and America’s longest war will finally be over,” he said.

He also called on Congress to “give diplomacy a chance” in his efforts to negotiate over nuclear weapons with Iran, and threatened to veto any bill containing new sanctions against Iran that would undermine those efforts. “If John F Kennedy and Ronald Reagan could negotiate with the Soviet Union, then surely a strong and confident America can negotiate with less powerful adversaries today,” he said.

And Obama continued to try to put thorny issues such as NSA surveillance, the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay and drone warfare behind him. Speaking of the NSA, Obama said: “Working with this Congress, I will reform our surveillance programs, because the vital work of our intelligence community depends on public confidence, here and abroad, that privacy of ordinary people is not being violated.”

The longest ovation was reserved for Cory Remsburg, an army ranger seriously injured by a roadside bomb on his 10th deployment in Afghanistan. Members of Congress, usually divided along party lines in their response to the State of the Union address, rose to their feet for more than a minute to recognize Remsburg, a guest of the White House. Remsburg, a Purple Heart recipient and sole survivor of the 2010 attack, now spends six hours of his day in occupational, physical and speech therapy.

In the official Republican response to Obama's address, the party sought to strike a compassionate tone, with Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers presenting a folksy picture of American conservatism. She emphasised family and children, and talked of her son born with Down's syndrome, in remarks delivered from a couch positioned strategically by a fireside.

She framed her criticisms of Obama in positive and forward-looking terms, in stark contrast to much of the toxic rhetoric that has been directed by leading conservatives against the president in recent months. Though she said “the president's health care law is not working”, she tempered the attack with the proviso: “No, we shouldn't go back to the way things were”.

The goal, she said, was an “America every bit as compassionate as it is successful, our plan is one that dreams big for everyone and turns back no-one”.

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