In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Barack Obama outlined plans to enable startup companies to grow and extend more opportunities to hardworking college students.
The state of the union is strong, he said.
One of the major contributors to this strength, he said, is that Congress agreed on a new budget that leaves more room for funding priorities like education.
“The budget compromise should leave us freer to focus on creating new jobs, not creating new crises,” Obama said.
He cited a White House-organized College Opportunity Summit that garnered commitments from 150 universities, businesses and nonprofits to “reduce inequality in access to higher education — and help every hardworking kid go to college and succeed when they get to campus.”
As an example, Obama said his administration has given more loans to small business owners in the past five years than any other administration.
“The best measure of opportunity is access to a good job,” he said.
He additionally urged businesses to raise the wages they pay employees. He said he plans to sign an executive order “requiring federal contractors to pay their federally funded employees a fair wage of at least $10.10 an hour.” He hopes other employers will follow his lead and “give America a raise.”
UF College Democrats President Lauren Nikoloff, 20, said after a watch party in the Reitz Union Auditorium that organization members looked forward to the wage increases as well as Obama’s intent to equalize women’s rights in the workplace.
The political science and economics junior also said she’s anticipating the president’s plan to increase opportunities for low-income college students, especially with his initiative to lay a strong foundation during K-12 education.
“He’s working hard to make sure every American has opportunities to advance,” she said.
Alachua County Young Republicans President Katy Melchiorre said she thought equal pay for women was an important topic, but that she didn’t support Obama’s particular plan.
“I don’t believe we need more government regulation on my income,” said the 22-year-old first-year UF law student.
She said that Obama’s anecdote about a small-business owner who personally raised the minimum wage for his employees was admirable for that particular small business, but she said she didn’t support his call to raise the federal minimum wage.
Overall, she called the speech “just another glorified campaign speech for his politics.”
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 1/29/2014 under the headline "State of the Union addresses student, business opportunities"]
