Dick Durbin: “tomorrow evening President Obama will come before Congress to deliver his annual State of the Union Address. America has…”

“tomorrow evening President Obama will come before Congress to deliver his annual State of the Union Address. America has changed a great deal since President Obama delivered his first State of the Union Address 7 years ago. We remember he inherited an economy in free fall. There was a real danger that the United States would face another Great Depression. Instead, we slid into a great recession. The President--President Obama--did all he could to bring our economy back to life. Recent economic indicators show that his strategy moved us in the right direction. More Americans are working. We are seeing prosperity and opportunity return. There are still challenges ahead. We still face income inequality, and there are many things we must do to make this a fairer nation when it comes to our economy, but we avoided a Great Depression because Americans are resilient and because our government, under the leadership of President Obama, had the courage to take bold action to help put Americans back to work and to invest in America's future when the private sector would not or could not. Our Union--and our future--is undoubtedly stronger today than when the President first took office, and I look forward to tomorrow evening when we hear this President's hopes and plans for his final year in service to our Nation. This afternoon I wish to take a few minutes to talk about another President and an earlier State of the Union Address.…”