Obama calls on U.S. to solve ‘deficit of trust’

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama,
staking a new commitment to fiscal restraint while renewing his bid for
an overhaul of the nation’s health care system, called on Americans
Wednesday night to repair “a deficit of trust.”

The president, addressing the nation and a joint session of Congress
in his first State of the Union address, suggested that the nation’s
budgetary deficit is not the only problem confronting Americans.

“We have to recognize that we face more than a
deficit of dollars right now,” the president planned to say, according
to prepared remarks released by the White House. “We face a deficit of trust — deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years.”

With this address, in the aftermath of a special election in Massachusetts that cost his party a super-majority and thus real control of the Senate, the president was attempting a delicate political pivot.

“Rather than fight the same tired battles that have dominated Washington for decades, it’s time for something new,” the president planned to say. “Let’s try common sense.”

After a first year in office focused on a $787 billion economic stimulus act, recession recovery and pursuit of a health care overhaul that could cost more than $1 trillion over 10 years, the president now is touting fiscal restraint.

The president — who plans to for a three-year freeze
in discretionary spending apart from national security in the 2011
budget that he proposes on Monday — also is creating his own budget
commission to examine spending and taxes in the aftermath of the Senate’s rejection this week of bipartisan commission.

With national unemployment running at 10 percent,
the president also is proposing new initiatives to help the middle
class, with additional aid for college loans and additional tax credits
for children.

And he is promoting new tax cuts for small businesses as well as breaks for all businesses that the White House says should result in a 10 percent reduction in taxes that corporations pay this year and next.

Obama, who last year called on Congress
to pass health care legislation, issued a new call for health-care
reform without adding any specific direction that leaders might heed.

“By the time I’m finished speaking tonight, more
Americans will have lost their health insurance,” Obama planned to say.
“I will not walk away from these Americans, and neither should the
people in this chamber.”

Obama reaffirmed his commitment to the fight against terrorism. He addressed the wars in Afghanistan, which he is escalating, and Iraq, where he is scaling back, and the challenge of containing the nuclear ambitions of Iran.

And the president, reiterating a promise made
before, said he would call on military leaders to finally find a way to
repeal a policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” for gays and lesbians
serving in the armed forces.

In the midst of continuing controversy over bonuses that bailed-out Wall Street
investment companies have awarded, Obama is pressing for new federal
regulation over banks aimed at averting another credit crisis like the
one that prompted a federal rescue of failing banks last year.

But he attempted to strike an optimistic tone about
the prospects for recovery from the worst recession since the Great
Depression.

“I have never been more hopeful about America’s
future than I am tonight,” Obama planned to say. “Despite our
hardships, our union is strong. We do not give up. We do not quit.”

The political environment surrounding this address
was fraught with challenges. Obama, who promised to “change the way
things work in Washington,” faces a Congress sharply divided since his party’s loss of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s seat in Massachusetts this month.

“We face big and difficult challenges,” Obama
planned to say. “And what the American people hope — what they deserve
— is for all of us, Democrats and Republicans, to work through our
differences, to overcome the numbing weight of our politics.”

The formal Republican response to the address comes from Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, whose election victory last year was part of a GOP sweep that continued in Massachusetts this year.

“The president’s partial freeze on discretionary
spending is a laudable step, but a small one,” McDonnell planned to
say. “The circumstances of our time demand that we reconsider and
restore the proper, limited role of government at every level.”

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