Prospects are mixed for President Obama's second-term agenda, from immigration to climate change to economic recovery. Both Obama and the Republicans are walking a tricky political line.?
President Obama applauds after introducing outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Feb. 8, 2013. The president will give his State of the Union address on Tuesday.
Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
EnlargeWhat are the prospects for President Obama?s top goals??There are the discrete items ? measures on guns, immigration, climate change, health care ? while high unemployment and stagnant economic growth still hang over everything. At the heart of Mr. Obama's agenda remains his core campaign commitment to the middle class, a theme that ran through his second inaugural and will surely carry into the State of the Union message on Tuesday.
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Perhaps the biggest question ahead of the State of the Union message is whether Obama will offer new details on deficit reduction, particularly in Medicare and Social Security. If Republicans want to tie the president up in knots, they have the rope: looming deadlines for deep spending cuts known as "the sequester;" the expiration of the latest temporary budget extension, which could force a government shutdown; and the next debt ceiling.
But Obama is expected to hang tough.
"I think he's confident that the discussion can take place on his terms, with the majority House Republicans still exposed to the blame if something isn't done," says Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
On the range of domestic issues, Obama is taking his case directly to the American people in a way he says he failed to do in his first term. "With public opinion, there's nothing you can't accomplish," he told The New Republic in January, citing his hero Abraham Lincoln.
Here are Obama's top domestic agenda items and their prospects:
Gun violence. The Newtown, Conn., school massacre shocked the nation ? and the president ? like no other recent tragedy. But Americans are far from consensus on how to address gun violence, and measures before Congress face a mixed future.
A renewed ban on military-style assault weapons is likely to go down. Even Vice President Joe Biden, head of Obama's gun task force, acknowledges that such weapons account for only a small percentage of firearm deaths, and he says he's more concerned about banning high-capacity ammunition magazines ? those with more than 10 rounds. But the powerful gun lobby opposes that ban as well.
A measure requiring background checks for all gun sales ? not just those by registered dealers ? to screen for people with criminal records and psychiatric problems has greater bipartisan support. Obama wants to move fast on gun control, as passions fade. But if even one significant gun measure reaches Obama's desk, he will have made his mark. No major gun-control law has passed since 1994.
Immigration. The dormant drive for comprehensive reform has come roaring back, following Obama's lopsided defeat of Mitt Romney among Latinos last November. Republicans such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush argue that many Latinos will not hear the GOP's message on economic opportunity and family values until the party adopts a more compassionate tone toward those in the country illegally.
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