“Opportunity for all” was one of the key points in President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address, which was presented to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, January 28.

Over the past four years, 8 million jobs have been created and unemployment is at its lowest point in five years at 6.4 percent. Only 10.4 million Americans are unemployed in America today compared to an unemployment rate of 9.28 percent in 2009, the first year of Obama’s administration.

The president said that he wants Congress to close the tax loopholes that give benefits to companies who outsource jobs to other countries instead of creating American jobs. President Obama said our nations’s infrastructure needs to be improved. This will create jobs for Americans and lower the unemployment rate.

Mr. Obama asked Congress to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. As a way to set an example he would like Congress to follow, President Obama issued an executive order that raised the minimum wage for all federal agencies to pay all employees at least $10.10 an hour.

Members of the Democratic Party wore blue ribbons to show their support for Obama’s plan to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. This was successful in showing the party’s solidarity.

“Americans who work full time should not have to raise a family in poverty,” President Obama said Tuesday night.

Since October, three million Americans have signed up for the Affordable Care Act or “Obamacare” as it is commonly known, which is President Obama’s signature piece of legislation. One of the three million Americans who signed up for Obamacare was in attendance at the president’s address Tuesday night – Amanda Shelley, a physician assistant and single mother from Arizona. President Obama said that Amanda could not afford health care prior to Obamacare. But thanks to the Affordable Care Act Ms.Shelley was able to be covered. Her coverage began on January 1.  On January 3, she felt a pain in her side that resulted in her needing emergency surgery on January 6.   Pres. Obama pointed out that if this had happened just a week earlier she might have been faced with living her life in debt.

Under the Affordable Care Act, every American has the opportunity to be covered. No one can be turned down by the insurance companies because of a pre-existing condition such as asthma or cancer. So under the Affordable Care Act, there is an, “opportunity for all.”

President Obama also talked about the war and how troops are returning home to their families. The climax of this section of the speech revolved around a Sergeant First Class Army Ranger named Cory Remsburg who, while serving on his tenth deployment to the Middle East, nearly died when a massive roadside bomb exploded leaving him with shrapnel in his brain. He was in a coma for months and when President Obama met him, “he couldn’t speak; he could barely move.”

After enduring dozens of surgeries and countless hours of rehab, he is still blind in one eye and still struggles with his left side of his body. Sergeant First Class Remsburg has grown stronger with the support of his father and his local community. He is working towards being able to serve his country again. Pres. Obama introduced him this way:  “Cory is here tonight. And like the Army he loves, like the America he serves, Sergeant First Class Cory Remsburg never gives up, and he does not quit.”

President Obama closed out his speech with saying that “…if we work together; if we summon what is best in us, the way Cory summoned what is best in him, with our feet planted firmly in today but our eyes cast towards tomorrow, I know it’s within our reach.”