Here is the text of President Obama's SOTU Address as prepared for delivery:

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
January 27, 2010

Madame Speaker, Vice President Biden, Members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans:

Our Constitution declares that from time to time, the President shall give to Congress information about the state of our union. For two hundred and twenty years, our leaders have fulfilled this duty. They have done so during periods of prosperity and tranquility. And they have done so in the midst of war and depression; at moments of great strife and great struggle. [More...]

I'll live blog it.

I believe the Secretary of State is absent tonight. One Cabinet member is designated to be absent, just in case a Tom Clancy book breaks out.

Maybe it's me, but not quite so rousing a reception for the President as compared to last year.

A special moment with Tim Geithner. Ugh.

Speech stuff on the flip. Barb has the speech. Follow along and see how much Obama changes it. On the health bill - the scheduled lines - "As temperatures cool, I want everyone to take another look at the plan we’ve proposed. [. . .] Here’s what I ask of Congress, though: Do not walk away from reform. Not now. Not when we are so close. Let us find a way to come together and finish the job for the American people."

President Obama's State of the Union address begins at 9pm ET. If you are not by a TV, you can watch live on C-Span here or at the White House website.

The topics: "Restoring security for middle class families after a lost decade of declining wages, eroding retirement security and escalating health care and tuition costs," unemployment, health care, and the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan.

NYTimes:

Weeks after rescuing the American International Group with an $85 billion taxpayer loan in late 2008, Federal Reserve Board officials rejected a proposal that would have forced the insurer’s trading partners to return $30 billion in cash that they had received from A.I.G. in the preceding months. The Fed chose instead to let the banks keep the cash and to receive additional billions from taxpayers.

This decision was made, internal documents show, after two Fed governors expressed concern that such a plan might be “a gift” to the company’s trading partners, including Goldman Sachs and Société Générale, a major French bank.

(Emphasis supplied.) Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner should resign.

Speaking for me only

James Kwak writes:

To me, it sounds like Obama has decided to imitate Bill Clinton, except that he’s going to skip 1994 and jump right to 1995-1996–the years that gave us welfare reform and the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, among other things. Deficit reduction is a classic “Third Way” policy, but by doing it this way Obama is ceding ground to the government-haters (who just want to cut spending) without getting anything (future tax increases, or votes for health care reform) in return.

(Emphasis supplied.)The more important point, in my mind, is Obama is skipping 1993 - more specifically the 1993 Omnibus Tax Reconciliation Act:

The policy problem with the Obama Administration's silly political gimmick - the spending freeze - is that it basically accepts the idea that there is an immediate need to cut government spending when in fact there still remains an urgent need to increase government spending to spur our stagnant economy. If we were to treat the proposal seriously, and the Village will, then the Obama administration has completely undermined the chances for effective policy to address our economic woes. Mark Thoma writes:

[This] political trick[] [is] likely to backfire. How will this look, for example, if there's a double dip recession, or if unemployment follows the dismal path that the administration itself has forecast?

Brad DeLong writes:

It is not surprising that the Obama Administration shares the view often espoused by Village Dems and bloggers of a Presidency with little persuasive power:

White House advisers say Democrats need to understand that Obama is not all-powerful. "There is this sense on Capitol Hill that somehow the president can go out and make a speech and everything just magically becomes better," said a senior White House adviser who requested anonymity in order to speak frankly. "If there is a lesson out of the Massachusetts race, it is the people on Capitol Hill have to realize nobody can go win this for you. If you're going to cast the vote, then you have to be prepared to argue why it was the best vote."

I just received the transcript from NBC's Meet the Press today. Here's Valerie Jarrett on Scott Brown's Senate victory:

I think the question to be asked, and what we learned from the Massachusetts victory, is that people are sick and tired of Washington not delivering for them.

And so, the question is really will the Republican Party become-- be willing to come and work with us? A silver lining is Senator Brown said yes, he's looking forward to coming to Washington and working with the Democrats. And we're hoping that that provides new leadership within the party.

On yesterday's Osama bin Laden tape: [More...]

Via ABC and TPM, President Obama says:

Here's one thing I know and I just want to make sure that this is off the table. The Senate certainly shouldn't try to jam anything through until Scott Brown is seated[.] People in Massachusetts spoke. He's got to be part of that process.

The video, courtesy of Daily Kos:

A few days ago in a comment thread, I was discussing President Obama's skills as a politician. My argument was, and is, that President Obama is a great politicians who has not applied his political skills to helping lift the Democratic Party's political fortunes nor to promoting his policies in a substantial way. The most recent WaPo poll supports my argument.

President Obama's approval rating is at 53%. In July is was at 59%. His personal popularity has been resilient. Unfortunately it has not translated into popularity for Democrats and Obama's policies. To be fair, it's not clear that Obama is doing any worse than the average President (his numbers are comparable to President Clinton's in early 1994.) But that is the point - in my view President Obama is capable of doing much better than the average President, especially given the conditions he inherited. Politically, President Obama has severely underperformed in his first year in my view.[More...]

Back in December 2007, I wrote about this E.J. Dionne column, where he wrote:

Obama is running as the candidate who can transcend these fights.[. . .] "There's no shortage of anger and bluster and bitter partisanship out there," he said. "We can change the electoral math that's been all about division and make it about addition."

Today, E.J. Dionne writes:

Via Greenwald, the NYTimes Ombudsman:

Jonathan Gruber, a prominent M.I.T. health economist, wrote an Op-Ed column in July supporting an excise tax on so-called Cadillac health plans. Not long before, he had signed a contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to analyze the economic impact of various health care proposals in Congress. He did not tell Op-Ed editors, nor was the contract mentioned on at least 12 other occasions when he was quoted in The Times after he was consulting for the administration. [. . .] He said he has long supported the tax and that the administration opposed it when he wrote his column, so he was hardly bending his views to a government paymaster.

(Emphasis supplied.) Did the Obama Administration oppose an excise tax in July 2009? This is news to me. My recollection is that Peter Orzag, Obama's head of OMB, has always been a proponent of the excise tax. I know of no statements by the Obama Administration opposing the excise tax. If Gruber is right, who opposed the excise tax and what changed their minds?

Speaking for me only