The National Rifle Association’s CEO on Thursday accused President Barack Obama of orchestrating a “charade” to dismantle gun rights in his State of the Union address this week.

Wayne LaPierre, the gun lobby group’s executive vice president and CEO, used a speech at a National Wild Turkey Federation conference in Nashville to decry the push for stricter gun laws made by Obama at the conclusion of his annual policy address on Tuesday.

“For our Second Amendment freedoms, Mr. President, we will stand and fight throughout this country as Americans for our freedoms,” LaPierre said to applause. “We promise you that.”

The gun rights advocate complained that “the words ‘school safety’ were nowhere to be found” in Obama’s address and renewed his call for funding to put an armed guard in every school in America. (Obama did speak of the need to “protect our most precious resource:  our children.”)

“It was only a few weeks ago that they were marketing their anti-gun agenda as a way of protecting schoolchildren from harm,” LaPierre said.  “That charade ended at the State of the Union, when the president himself exposed their fraudulent intentions. It’s not about keeping kids safe in school.… They only care about their decades-long, decades-old gun control agenda.”

Obama closed the speech by referencing victims of gun violence and victims’ families in attendance at his speech, forcefully repeating that those victims at least “deserve a vote” on the gun control measures proposed by the administration in the wake of the deadly December shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.

"Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote," Obama said to sustained applause. "The families of Oak Creek and Tucson and Blacksburg and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence –- they deserve a simple vote."

LaPierre has been as dogged as ever, though, in resisting those proposals, taking to conservative media in recent days to make his point. Writing Wednesday for the Daily Caller, LaPierre evoked a dystopian vision of a world without guns in the aftermath of last year’s Hurricane Sandy in New York.

“After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia,” LaPierre wrote. “Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all.”

However, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at the time there were no murders committed during the storm or its very immediate aftermath.

That went nowhere fast.

President Obama laid out nearly two dozen proposals, promises, and calls for Congress to act Tuesday night in his fourth State of the Union address. But his speech was met by a brick wall of Republican opposition.

"An opportunity to bring the country together instead became another retread of lip service and liberalism,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said. “For a Democratic president entering his second term, it was simply unequal to the moment.”

Despite President Obama’s subtle reference to wanting to reform Medicare during the State of the Union address, McConnell accused Obama of catering to his base, and dismissed the speech as “pedestrian” and “liberal boilerplate.”

“Following four years of this president's unwillingness to challenge liberal dogma, we got more of the same,” McConnell said.

That echoed House Speaker John Boehner’s charge yesterday that the president didn’t have “the guts” to challenge his base and make spending cuts to fix the budget.

Asked if Democrats on the Hill would be willing to entertain cuts to Social Security and Medicare, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said on MSNBC Wednesday, “Absolutely not.”

McConnell rejected Obama’s call for increased infrastructure spending and his push on climate change, instead noting that Obama didn’t mention the Keystone Pipeline or coal, which he called “proven and reliable.”

"The president spoke about energy infrastructure but didn't mention the Keystone pipeline,” McConnell said. “He chose the nation's biggest stage to promote something that's inefficient and costly, like solar panels, instead of something that's proven and reliable - and domestically produced - like coal.”

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

John Boehner answers questions at the Republican Party Headquarters on Capitol Hill February 13, 2013 in Washington, DC.

McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) also dismissed Obama’s call to increase the minimum wage to $9 an hour. It’s something Obama said was necessary given that someone working full time at $7.25 an hour, the current minimum wage, would only make $14,500 a year. The minimum wage has been flat since 2009.

"He spoke of workers' minimum wages, instead of their maximum potential,” McConnell said.

“When you raise the price of employment, guess what happens? You get less of it,” Boehner told reporters Wednesday. “At a time when American people are asking, ‘Where are the jobs?’ why would we want to make it harder for small employers to hire people.”

He added, “Our goal is to get people on that ladder and help them climb that ladder so they can live the American dream. And a lot of people who are being paid the minimum wage, are being paid that because they come to the workforce with no skills, and this makes it harder for them to acquire the skills they need in order to climb that ladder successfully.”

NBC's Kelly O'Donnell and Frank Thorp contributed to this report.

Obama’s two speeches in one… First part was your typical SOTU; second part was emotional plea to curb gun violence… Obama on the economy, sequester… President also unveils laundry list of economic/educational proposals… Obama heads to Asheville, NC to deliver speech at noon ET… On Rubio’s tough assignment last night and on whether he expanded his party’s appeal… And yesterday’s vitriolic day at the Senate Armed Services Committee.

*** Obama’s two speeches in one: Perhaps the best way to view President Obama’s State of the Union address last night was a tale of two speeches (actually, you could even argue three speeches if you count the sequester portion, which we discuss below). The first part was your traditional State of the Union -- domestic policies proposed, praise for America’s resiliency, and recognition of the country’s military service members. As he did in his inaugural address, Obama also called for comprehensive immigration reform and efforts to combat climate change. But it was the second part that was something you don’t often see in a State of the Union -- an emotional conclusion in talking about his proposals to curb gun violence that ended up overshadowing the rest of the speech. Recognizing the parents of a slain Chicago teenager who performed at last month’s inauguration, Obama said, “They deserve a vote [in Congress].” He continued, “Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote. The families of Oak Creek and Tucson and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence –- they deserve a simple vote.” It was powerful stuff, and a reminder that the gun debate (as well as the emotion that goes with it) isn’t going away anytime soon. Yet with Obama asking simply for a vote, it was also a reminder that passing anything won’t be easy. It was actually a fairly low bar for success that the president set. 

Jason Reed / Reuters

President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union speech on Capitol Hill in Washington, February 12, 2013.

*** Obama on the economy, sequester: The top of the president’s remarks were focused on the economy and the ongoing debate over the budget.  Obama warned that the so-called sequester -- the automatic spending cuts set to take place March 1 -- would hurt the economy. “These sudden, harsh, arbitrary cuts would jeopardize our military readiness,” he said. “They’d devastate priorities like education, and energy, and medical research. “They would certainly slow our recovery, and cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs.” He also noted that Congress had already reduced the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion, and he laid out proposals to curb Medicare spending. And he called for Congress to work together to resolve the budget issues. “Let’s agree right here, right now to keep the people’s government open, and pay our bills on time, and always uphold the full faith and credit of the United States of America.” Buried in this speech is something that the president didn’t want to advertise, but that was placed in there as a hint to Republicans at where he’s ready to compromise on the deficit: He called for cuts to Medicare equal to what Bowles-Simpson proposed. He never said the number (not popular politically), but he stated the goal. Folks, this is where the compromise in March could happen.  

*** The laundry list of proposals: After opening with sequester and trying to frame the upcoming budget fights on his terms, the president then laid out a series of new initiatives. Universal pre-K. Infrastucture projects. Better training high-school students for technical jobs. Raising the minimum wage to $9.00 per hour. And creating a bipartisan commission to expand voting rights. We’re already hearing many Republicans dismissing these proposals as small bore. And, yes, we had Clinton flashbacks ourselves (remember the school uniforms?). But we’d note that this is a potential trap for the GOP. These are items -- especially the ones on education -- that many Americans care about, and they test REALLY WELL in polls. Republicans may want to claim all the ideas together are “liberal” and “big government,” but individually, these ideas poll test through the roof. They are 65% ideas, not 50%-50% ones. Today, Obama heads to Asheville, NC to begin selling his State of the Union with a speech at noon ET. (There, per the White House, he will tour a local factory to highlight the manufacturing policies he unveiled last night.) Tomorrow, he goes to Atlanta, GA. And on Friday, it’s to Chicago.

*** Rubio’s tough assignment: As we wrote last week, giving the State of the Union response hasn’t always been the best stepping stone to higher office. And with Marco Rubio’s response last night, we saw why. While the president gets to address a packed Congress and recognize individual citizens sitting in the audience, the responder often speaks to an empty room or office. While the president gets applause and opportunities for TV camera cutaways (and thus maybe a chance to take a swig of water), the responder looks straight into the camera with no one else there and with no chance for a break. That’s why the viral moment of Rubio gulping down water -- a moment he’s since joked about -- was so jarring. But even take away that water-gulping moment, Rubio’s speech shows you why the State of the Union response is such a tough assignment and one that’s fraught with peril. When it comes to music concerts, the main act is the final event. But the State of the Union is the only instance we can think of where the main act goes first and the side act is last.

*** Did he broaden the party’s reach? But here’s a separate question we have: Did Rubio broaden his party’s reach? While he’s younger than Mitt Romney and has a more relatable life story, Rubio’s speech was almost a rehash of almost everything we heard from Romney and the GOP in 2012. He accused Obama of believing that the free enterprise system is the source of America’s problems (when the president praised it in his State of the Union); he said that Obama wants to grow the size of the government; and he attacked the health-care law. All of those messages had hundreds of millions of dollars behind them in the 2012 presidential election, and Republicans got just 47% of the vote in the presidential election. There is no doubt that Rubio is a GOP politician with a bright future and plenty of personal appeal. But it also seemed like Rubio was preaching to the Republican choir rather than broadening the party’s reach. It’s a speech that is being very well received among conservatives, but was it a persuasion speech?

*** A vitriolic day at the Senate Armed Services Committee: Besides Obama’s State of the Union and Rubio’s response, the other big political event yesterday was Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be defense secretary passing through the Senate Armed Services by a party-line vote. But the actual vote got overshadowed by something else. The New York Times: “At times, the meeting slipped into an unusually accusatory and bitter back-and-forth, with Republicans like Ted Cruz, a freshman senator from Texas, going as far as to suggest that Mr. Hagel had accepted money from nations that oppose American interests. Saying that he had serious doubts about the source of payments that Mr. Hagel had accepted for speaking engagements, Mr. Cruz declared, ‘It is at a minimum relevant to know if that $200,000 that he deposited in his bank account came directly from Saudi Arabia, came directly from North Korea.’” That back-and-forth added fuel to the fire that the Senate is -- more and more -- turning into the more combative House of Representatives. On the other hand, with Democratic senators and even John McCain stepping in to rebuke Cruz (“No one on this committee should at any time impugn his character or his integrity”), it was a reminder that there’s a line you can’t cross in the Senate. Cruz is cementing himself as someone who doesn’t play by the old rules; that will make him popular with many non-Beltway conservatives. But he’s not making a lot of friends in the Senate (even among Republicans).

*** On the Hill today: The Senate Judiciary Committee holds a hearing on comprehensive immigration reform at 9:30 am ET, and Jack Lew’s confirmation hearing to be Treasury secretary takes place before the Senate Finance Committee at 10:00 am ET.

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Ahead of the State of the Union on Tuesday night, TODAY's Matt Lauer sat down with House Speaker John Boehner to defend his comments that President Obama lacks courage to fix the nation's growing deficit and explain where he thinks the country is headed.

"Listen, I think the president's out of ideas when it comes to how to fix the economy," Boehner said. "Because everything that he seems to want to do is more tax hikes and more stimulus spending."

Earlier in the day, Boehner told reporters he didn't think Obama had "the guts" to take the steps needed to restore the economy. 

"I think he'd like to deal with it (fiscal problems), but to do the kind of heavy lifting that needs to be done, I don't think he's got the guts to do it," he said. "He understands there is a spending problem. He understands that we need changes and reforms, and we need to solve these problems."

While Boehner accused the president of lacking courage to stand up to his own party, he acknowledged that people could say the same about him and the Republicans he leads in the House.

“Listen, I've had my troubles with my own party. There's no question about it,” he said. “But it was never about the courage to step up and do the right thing for the country.”

Boehner insisted that “the president and I get along fine,” despite his recent combative comments.

“We come from very different worlds. He has a liberal ideology, I come from a more conservative side,” he said. "But having said that, the American people on Election Day gave us a mandate, a Republican Congress and a Democrat president. And the mandate was to find a way to work together. Find common ground." 

The one area where they might find agreement is on immigration reform, on which Boehner said he would be willing to defy those in his party to work with Democrats and pass a comprehensive package.

“We’ll have to see what the bill is. We’ve got to work through this in a bipartisan way. We can’t get the cart before the horse here,” he said.

A more difficult topic to reach agreement upon will be gun control. Boehner said the nation must take a broader look at the issue and examine the source of violence.

“If you look at each of these mass shootings, each of the shooters, all had mental health issues. How could we do a better job there of controlling their access to weapons? What do we do about school safety? There are a lot of things we ought to look at,” he said.

But he didn’t say whether he agreed with the National Rifle Association’s proposal to place armed guards in schools.

“There are a lot of ideas out there. The question is what will truly help bring down the violence in our society,” he said. “I think taking this easy approach on putting more rules on lawful gun owners — remember, they’re lawful gun owners. The people who own guns illegally, they don't pay attention anyway.”

Boehner also showed a softer side during his interview. He discussed a Washington-based scholarship program he supports and his decision to reserve his House box seats during the president’s address for two fourth-grade students from an inner city school.

“You never know. If you give them an opportunity, they might get a big idea. They might follow their dream,” he said.

For those two girls, seeing an African American president address the nation could be a pivotal moment, Boehner said. He acknowledged that while the nation struggles to send more minority lawmakers to Capitol Hill, he’s seen improvement during his 22 years in office.

“I would guess the number of other faces in the congress has more than doubled,” he said. “Our society is making progress. Our society will continue to make progress.”

TODAY's Meena Hart Duerson contributed to this report.

More:

Boehner: Obama doesn't have 'the guts' to cut spending

High school teacher suspended over 'fat butt Michelle Obama' remark

Stop gun violence, kids ask President Obama

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 12, 2013 8:44 PM EST

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio sought to put a softer face on Republicans’ small-government agenda, accusing President Barack Obama of spreading blame for his own administration’s shortcomings.

Rubio used the official Republican response to Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday to advance the friendlier tone the GOP has sought to project after two straight drubbings in presidential elections.

Related: Obama challenges GOP, presses big agenda at State of the Union

A 41-year-old Cuban-American, Rubio referenced his own experience on matters such as immigration and entitlements. But he also used the spotlight to showcase well-known Republican positions: for a balanced budget amendment, for instance, and against stricter gun control that Obama wants.

“Mr. President, I don’t oppose your plans because I want to protect the rich,” Rubio said, in a line representative of Republicans’ effort to shirk their caricature of a party favoring the wealthy. “I oppose your plans because I want to protect my neighbors.”

A rising star within the Republican Party who is regarded as a top contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, Rubio used much of his speech to lay into Obama with familiar criticisms. He accused the president of demonizing the GOP for its resistance to the administration’s agenda.

“There are valid reasons to be concerned about the president’s plan to grow our government. But any time anyone opposes the president’s agenda, he and his allies usually respond by falsely attacking their motives,” Rubio said.

Rubio’s moment in the spotlight was eagerly awaited by many Republicans, but at one point the spotlight seemed to affect him: Rubio ducked to his left, and almost out of camera range, to pick up a small bottle of water and take a gulp.

The unusual break in the speech was quickly mocked on Twitter. Within minutes of the speech, Poland Spring — the brand that Rubio reached for — was a trending topic.

The Florida senator was part of a bipartisan so-called Gang of Eight who last month presented a framework for immigration reform. It called for securing the U.S.-Mexican border before dealing with the nation’s 11 million undocumented immigrants.

He sounded those themes again Tuesday and said: “First, we must follow through on the broken promises of the past to secure our borders and enforce our laws.”

Rubio devoted a sizable portion of his address to attacking Obama’s proposals on the federal budget. He said that he hoped the president would “abandon his obsession with raising taxes” and instead focus on economic growth.

Recommended: Senate panel OK's Hagel nomination; GOP senators could delay floor vote

The senator, who said that he himself had only just paid off $100,000 in student loans, accused Obama of blaming President George W. Bush for a rising federal debt when Obama “created more debt in four years than his predecessor did in eight.”

Rubio’s speech sets the stage for this spring’s fight over Democratic and Republican proposals to resolve the so-called sequester — automatic spending cuts to government programs set to take effect March 1.

The Obama administration has said that the cuts would hamper economic growth and harm national security.

Rubio accused Obama of seeking “devastating” cuts to the military and said that the answer to the nation’s fiscal problems in stronger economic growth and creating “new taxpayers, not new taxes.”

Recommended: Lawmakers clash on gun rights as victims' families gather

Rubio framed Washington fights over taxes and spending in personal terms. He spoke of retirees in his neighborhood who depend on Social Security, and how Medicare helped both his mother and his late father.

“I would never support any changes to Medicare that would hurt seniors like my mother,” he said. “But anyone who is in favor of leaving Medicare exactly the way it is right now, is in favor of bankrupting it.”

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, giving a separate response address to a tea party group, suggested that not only should the automatic spending cuts standing — they should be greater.

“Washington acts in a way that your family never could,” he said, according to prepared remarks. “They spend money they do not have, they borrow from future generations, and then they blame each other for never fixing the problem.”

If Congress can’t pay its own bills and pass a budget, Paul said, “Sweep the place clean.”

President Barack Obama challenged Republicans on major tax and entitlement proposals in Tuesday's State of the Union address, unveiling sweeping new initiatives to boost the middle class while taking aim at GOP recalcitrance.

The president traveled to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for the annual speech, where he pressed Republicans to allow his proposals on issues ranging from taxes and entitlements to guns and immigration to move forward. While Obama seemed determined to advance his ambitious agenda, he must race against a window of opportunity that often closes quickly on presidents in their second terms. 

Moreover, the president's plans will have to survive the brier patch of Capitol Hill, where Republicans have strenuously opposed much of Obama’s agenda and are girding for a major springtime showdown on budgets and the swift, automatic spending cuts known as the sequester.

“Let's be clear: deficit reduction alone is not an economic plan,” said Obama, who argued that his second term priorities did not represent “bigger government,” but rather, “smarter government.”

Obama spent much of the first half of his speech challenging Republicans on that central issue after two years of legislating in Washington that saw the government lurch from the brink of a shut down to the brink of a debt-limit default to the brink of automatic tax hikes. 

“Let’s agree, right here, right now, to keep the people’s government open, pay our bills on time, and always uphold the full faith and credit of the United States of America,” the president said. 

The assertive rhetoric from Obama recalled the themes on which he successfully campaigned for re-election last fall. Tuesday’s speech mostly lived up to its billing by the White House as a coda to the liberal call-to-arms in Obama's second inaugural address on issues ranging from government spending to gay rights and immigration reform.

One issue on which Obama did not campaign -- stricter gun controls -- featured more poignantly in Tuesday's speech. Gun violence has unwittingly become a cornerstone of Obama's second term agenda following the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn. last December.

Gun control is an issue on which Obama faces stiffer Republican resistance, and the president took a much more personal tack in pressing lawmakers to take up his proposals. He turned victims of high-profile shootings in attendance at Tuesday’s speech in urging lawmakers to, at the very least, allow his gun proposals a vote.

"Gabby Giffords deserves a vote," he said, referring to the critically injured former Arizona congresswoman in the House chamber. "The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote. The families of Oak Creek, and Tucson, and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence – they deserve a simple vote."

Obama’s speech on Tuesday was delivered in the same vein; the president embraced proposals that might encounter resistance in this Congress, such as new legislation to address climate change. But, in a reflection of Obama’s newfound feistiness in a second term, the president vowed to take executive action if Congress would not act.

Obama made other proposals he said would bolster the middle class. Among Obama’s proposals were: universal access to preschool for all four-year-olds, increasing the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour by the end of 2015, $50 billion in infrastructure spending, and partnerships to promote cleaner energy and improved manufacturing.

Those initiatives, the president pledged, should not increase the deficit “by a single dime.”

To help finance those initiatives, Obama called for broad individual and corporate tax reforms, as well as savings from entitlement programs like Medicare – changes to which have been a lightning rod in recent election cycles. Those proposals carefully track with Obama's previous demands to close loopholes and deductions to raise new revenue in tax reform.

But Republicans have argued that the matter of new revenue is “settled” following a fiscal cliff deal that saw the GOP relent to higher taxes on household income above $450,000. To that end, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, in the official Republican response, called on Obama to “abandon his obsession with raising taxes and instead work with us to achieve real growth in our economy.”

RELATED: Rubio to frame bitter tax, spending fights in humanizing terms

Obama’s ambitious plans come as he’s asking lawmakers to approve two other major proposals: comprehensive immigration reform that gives undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship, and a series of tighter controls on firearms as part of a broader effort to curb gun violence.

On immigration, the president lauded a bipartisan Senate group’s work on immigration.

Slideshow: State of the Union

Charles Dharapak / Pool / EPA

Click to see pictures from President Obama's State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress.

Launch slideshow

“As we speak, bipartisan groups in both chambers are working diligently to draft a bill, and I applaud their efforts,” he said. “Now let’s get this done. Send me a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the next few months, and I will sign it right away."

But for as much as fiscal matters and economic policy have dominated discussion in Washington, Obama devoted a good part of his State of the Union speech to foreign policy – highlighting in particular the planned withdrawal of 34,000 American troops from Afghanistan in the next year, a tangible symbol of how that war is winding to its end.

Obama also used his speech to address some of the emergent national security issues. He condemned North Korea’s nuclear test on Tuesday and pledged to work with Congress to develop rules for the use of unmanned aerial drones in targeting terrorists for assassination. The administration has faced new scrutiny on that latter issue amid the revelation of a new White House memo arguing that the president has wide latitude to target Americans for assassination if they’re deemed to be assisting terrorist actors.

Obama additional announced a new executive order to inoculate U.S. infrastructure from a cyber-attack, by enabling greater information-sharing between the government and its partners and calling for the development of a National Infrastructure Protection Plan within 240 days.

The event, as always, was filled with Washington pomp and circumstance, including lawmakers to arrived hours earlier to reserve prime seats for themselves. Also, in keeping with tradition, outgoing Energy Secretary Steven Chu was kept spirited away from the Capitol to ensure continuity of government in case of a security incident.

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 12, 2013 8:35 PM EST

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio will look to jettison Republicans’ caricature as a party of the rich in the official Republican response Tuesday to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address.

Recommended: Obama says Bolstering middle class must be policy 'North Star'

Rubio, the Cuban-American senator and a rising Republican star, will frame Washington’s bitter fights over taxes and spending in humanizing terms. His remarks seem firmly tied to the broader Republican effort to expand its reach and shirk the image of a GOP that has grown older, whiter and more dominated by men.

“Mr. President, I still live in the same working class neighborhood I grew up in. My neighbors aren't millionaires. They're retirees who depend on Social Security and Medicare. They're workers who have to get up early tomorrow morning and go to work to pay the bills. They're immigrants, who came here because they were stuck in poverty in countries where the government dominated the economy,” Rubio will say, according to English-language excerpts released by his office. (Rubio will also deliver a pre-taped response in Spanish.)

Mark Wilson / Getty Images

Florida Senator Marco Rubio speaks during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Tampa Bay Times Forum on Aug. 30, 2012 in Tampa.

“Mr. President, I don't oppose your plans because I want to protect the rich. I oppose your plans because I want to protect my neighbors,” the Florida senator will add.

Rubio’s speech will also seize upon anemic U.S. economic growth in the fourth quarter of last year to argue that increased revenues would only stifle the sluggish recovery from the 2008 recession.

“Raising taxes won't create private sector jobs. And there's no realistic tax increase that could lower our deficits by almost $4 trillion,” Rubio will say. “That's why I hope the President will abandon his obsession with raising taxes and instead work with us to achieve real growth in our economy."

Recommended: Florida – the state to watch over the next four years

The Republican’s speech sets the stage for this spring’s fight over alternative Democratic and Republican budget proposals, both of which are tied into resolving the so-called “sequester” – the swift, automatic spending cuts that make up part of the “fiscal cliff.” Lawmakers delayed the onset of these cuts until Mar. 1, but lawmakers appear nowhere near a deal to avoid its effects, which would threaten to hamper economic growth and harm national security, according to the Obama administration.

Among other policy specifics upon which Rubio will touch are budgets and entitlement reforms. The first-term senator will call for ratifying a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution – a proposal that has failed before in Congress – as well as changes to Medicare that would shore up the program’s solvency for future generations.

From President Obama's apparent snub of an eager congressman to Sen. Marco Rubio's awkward lunge for water during the Republican response, a look back at the president's fourth State of the Union address as seen through social media. Share your thoughts using hashtag #NBCPolitics. For complete coverage, visit http://NBCPolitics.com.

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 12, 2013 6:28 PM EST

Updated 6 p.m. ET -- President Barack Obama was set to announce broad goal of reinvigorating America's middle class during his second term at Tuesday's State of the Union address, calling it the "North Star" that guides policy making in Washington in the immediate future.

 "A growing economy that creates good, middle-class jobs - that must be the North Star that guides our efforts," Obama would tell lawmakers in tonight's speech to a joint session of Congress, according to excerpts released by the White House. "Every day, we should ask ourselves three questions as a nation:  How do we attract more jobs to our shores?  How do we equip our people with the skills needed to do those jobs?  And how do we make sure that hard work leads to a decent living?"

 The top issues for Americans – jobs and the economy – were expected to be the central focus of Obama’s speech, the fourth formal State of the Union address he’s delivered since being elected in 2008. If the country’s struggles to emerge from a severe recession defined Obama’s first term, then the task of returning to the U.S. to a robust pace of growth was arguably the most urgent facing Obama as he enters his second term.

 Obama’s remarks are expected to focus on how to best help the middle class, particularly through investments in programs. The president was set to tell lawmakers these new plans were "fully consistent" with their past budget agreements and that, more importantly, they would not worsen a ballooned federal deficit.

 "Let me repeat - nothing I'm proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime," Obama would say. "It's not a bigger government we need, but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth."

 That emphasis comes against a spring budget battle between Obama and Republicans on Capitol Hill amid the looming threat of “sequester,” the automatic and swift spending cuts that the administration warns would cripple the economy and harm the national defense. The Jan. 1 fiscal cliff deal put off those cuts for two months, but Democrats and Republicans appear nowhere near a deal to avert the onset of those spending cuts in a few weeks.

 “It's pretty clear to me that the sequester's going to go into effect,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday on Capitol Hill. “I have seen no evidence that the House plans to act on this matter before the end of the month.”

 Related: At least four members of Congress already in seats for State of the Union

With the specter of sequestration hanging over tonight’s speech, Obama’s arguments on taxes, spending and entitlement reform will shape the contours of the fiscal fights in the weeks ahead. Perhaps the biggest open question heading into Tuesday’s speech was whether the president would be as forceful in making his case as he was during his second inaugural address. That speech – a liberal call to arms on the size of government, gay rights, immigration and beyond – was said by the administration to be intended to be paired with this State of the Union address.

Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images

President Barack Obama speaks during an Armed Forces Farewell Tribute in honor of outgoing Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta at Joint Base Myer-Henderson in Arlington, Va., Feb. 8, 2013.

Indeed, elements of that inaugural address are sure to feature prominently in tonight’s speech before a joint session of Congress. Obama has made a comprehensive immigration reform law that provides a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants a centerpiece of his second term agenda. The administration has also pushed for tighter regulations on firearms as part of a broader effort to curb gun violence. The fate of those measures is less certain.

Related: From rock stars, to CEOs and gun victims – a diverse guest list for State of the Union

Foreign policy will receive its due time, too, in Obama’s speech. The president is expected to announce that about half of the troops currently remaining in Afghanistan would return to the U.S. within the next year. Obama will almost certainly address Tuesday’s nuclear weapon test by North Korea during tonight’s speech, as well.

Published 3:25 p.m. ET -- What do rocker Ted Nugent, Apple CEO Tim Cook, singer Tony Bennett, Mohawk-coiffed NASA staffer Bobak Ferdowski, and a 103-year old Florida woman have in common?  They’re all going to be among the members of Congress and other Washington dignitaries for tonight’s State of the Union  address. They, and many other related guests, may seem like an eclectic bunch but they’re all invited for a purpose.

Together, those guests form a diverse group of Americans who together paint a portrait of a nation in flux: victims of gun violence, undocumented immigrants, veterans of the war in Afghanistan, and the corporate executives and small-business owners who represent the strong economic future the president must outline in his speech.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Singer Tony Bennett will attend the State of the Union as a guest of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Twenty members of Congress have organized an effort to include almost two dozen victims of gun violence and their families at the Capitol for President Obama’s annual address. Former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who was shot in January 2011 during a constituent meeting in her district, and her husband, Mark Kelly, also will attend the speech as guests of Rep. Ron Barber, D-Ariz., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. The parents of slain Chicago teen Hadiya Pendleton will attend the State of Union as guests of first lady Michelle Obama.

RELATED: Two charged with murder in Hadiya Pendleton shooting

Curbing gun violence sprang to the top of the administration’s agenda following a string of mass shootings. There was the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo., and the attack on a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisc., among others. The president has pushed for new gun control measures, including universal background checks and an assault weapons ban. The latter faces a particularly steep uphill fight in Congress, though Obama has maintained his resolve. Such a ban "deserves a vote in Congress because weapons of war have no place on our streets or in our schools or threatening our law enforcement officers,” he told an audience in Minneapolis earlier this month.

Sitting in likely opposition to this gun control push: Nugent. The rocker will be the guest of Texas Congressman Steve Stockman. Nugent landed in hot water with the Secret Service in April 2012 when he declared at a national NRA meeting that if Obama was re-elected, “I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

Kevin Tighe / Getty Images Contributor

Ted Nugent performs at Ruth Eckerd Hall on August 6, 2012 in Tampa, Florida.

RELATED: Gun control advocates use State of the Union to highlight their cause 

Sweeping immigration reform, a promise of Obama’s in his 2008 campaign, eluded the president in his first term, culminating in the Senate’s late 2010 failure to pass the DREAM Act. A year and a half later, the Obama administration made waves in announcing an executive order to halt the deportation of illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. The president renewed his focus on reform earlier this year following the Senate’s construction of new legislative framework for an immigration policy overhaul.

Sitting in the audience tonight will be 20-year-old Alan Aleman, a DREAM Act activist and student at the College of Southern Nevada who was one of his state’s first undocumented immigrants to receive a work permit under deferred action. Several congressional leaders including Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Texas and Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., have also extended invitations to those who have been touched by the immigration issue.

RELATED: State of the Union’s special guests: undocumented immigrants 

But one of Obama’s top priorities is economic growth. More than seven in 10 Americans remain dissatisfied with the current state of the economy, according to a recent NBC News/WSJ poll. But in attendance tonight will be examples of prosperity from across the socio-economic spectrum: small-business owners like brewery owner Deb Carey of Wisconsin, and corporate executives like Apple’s Cook and ECCO Select CEO Jeanette Hernandez-Prenger, an invitee of House Speaker John Boehner.

Also in attendance tonight will be those who have argued for increased civil rights and protections. Guests include Amanda McMillan, who won a gender discrimination case she filed against her former employer; Desiline Victor, the 103-year old Florida woman who waited in line for hours to vote; and Tracy Hepner, the co-founder of a group that supports LGBT military partners and their families.

Damian Dovarganes / AP file

Bobak Ferdowsi, a flight director for the Mars rover Curiosity, works at his computer at the Surface Mission Support Area, at NASA's JPL in Pasadena, Calif. Known to the Twitterverse and the president of the United States as "Mohawk Guy," Bobak Ferdowski could be the changing face of NASA and all of geekdom.

Also to be seated in the first lady’s section are Sgt. Carlos Evans, a combat veteran who sustained injuries in Afghanistan, and Sgt. Sheena Adams, a recipient of the Combat Action Ribbon for her completion of leadership and deployment last year. The president is expected to announce during his address tonight that 34,000 of the 66,000 U.S. troops currently in Afghanistan will return home within the year, according to a senior administration official. 

And last but not least, there’s NASA’s “Mohawk Guy.” Ferdowsi, also a guest of the first lady, will serve to draw attention to the president’s calls for visas for technology-trained immigrants. Ferdowsi is the Iranian-American who helped guide the Curiosity rover on Mars.

RELATED: NASA's 'Mohawk Guy' will sit with first lady at State of Union 

Previewing President Barack Obama’s Tuesday night State of the Union speech, a White House official said the president will propose ideas for sparking economic growth “by investing in manufacturing, clean energy, education, and infrastructure.”

Since three of those fields -- manufacturing, energy, and infrastructure – are so tightly inter-related, what investments is the federal government already making in each of those fields?

Related: Obama’s last chance to go big

And apart from simply increasing the amount of money Congress appropriates, or boosting the size of the tax breaks for -- manufacturing, energy, and infrastructure, what new policy ideas might be available in each for those fields?

Manufacturing

In last year’s State of the Union address, Obama said his strategy for economic growth “begins with manufacturing.”

In his Fiscal Year 2013 budget proposal unveiled last February, Obama called for providing $120 billion over ten years in tax incentives and preferences for manufacturing in the United States, including tax breaks for making alternative-fuel commercial vehicles.

Apart from tax breaks, he proposed a total of $2.2 billion in direct spending for projects at the National Science Foundation and elsewhere in the federal government to encourage manufacturing.

Obama also proposed spending $1 billion over ten years to “develop a national network of manufacturing innovation institutes” -- a proposal which Congress never passed, but which the Obama administration jump-started with $30 million in funding for a center in Youngstown, Ohio.

But since the government is still functioning on a six-month continuing resolution, which keeps spending levels  at those of the fiscal prior year, most of Obama’s new initiatives from last February haven’t been fully funded, or funded at all.

It’s worth noting that the administration still has money available from the $830 billion stimulus program that launched Obama’s job creation effort in 2009. Just last week, the Department of Energy announced it had $150 million available in unused Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits for clean energy and energy efficiency manufacturing projects.

It’s hard to debate whether the federal government is doing enough, too much, or too little to support manufacturing through direct spending and tax breaks. That’s because even the experts cannot give a precise answer as to how much is being spent.

A recent report from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service said: “There appears to be no comprehensive, reliable estimate of the amount the federal government is spending on programs that support the manufacturing sector.”

The report said it is hard to get a precise figure because “such support is delivered through direct and indirect channels.” For example, the research tax credit is not limited to manufacturing firms, but “they are the biggest users of the credit among all sectors.” That tax break will cost about $6.8 billion this year, according to the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation.

The CRS report also notes the arguments against targeted spending or tax incentives for manufacturing: “it is unlikely that special aid for manufacturing would spark a significant rise in job creation in the current economy. The sector’s contribution to overall employment has been declining for more than three decades and now stands at 9% of U.S. non-farm employment.”

Aric Newhouse, senior vice president for policy and government relations at the National Association of Manufacturers, said his group hopes to hear from Obama on Tuesday night “very specific, concrete actions the president can take,” for example, “We’d love to see the president announce that he’s initiating bilateral free trade agreements with ten, 20, 30 different countries around the world with we don’t have bilateral agreements.”

He added, “Ninety-five percent of the world’s consumers are outside of our borders and we’ve not really seen much action on the trade side over the last four years. We’re hopeful that we’ll see some real movement.”

“Clean energy”

There’s much overlap between Obama’s effort to spur U.S.-based manufacturing and his crusade for alternatives to traditional fossil fuels.

The wind turbine and biodiesel industries scored a major victory when Obama signed into law the American Taxpayer Relief Act on Jan. 2. The law extended tax preferences for those industries. 

According to the Congressional Research Service, the wind production tax credit, which dates back to a 1992 law signed by President George H. W. Bush, has been “the main policy tool in the deployment of U.S. wind power” and “a significant driver of the recent growth of the U.S. wind industry.”

But the surge in U.S. production of natural gas has altered the global energy landscape, making relatively cheap U.S.-produced natural gas the preferred energy alternative for many utilities and industrial operations.

One decision Obama administration must make is whether to allow increased exports of liquefied natural gas to send “cleaner energy” – cleaner than coal, especially – to other countries. Increased LNG exports could spur new investments in energy infrastructure and thus create jobs.

With Obama saying that there’s a need for additional tax revenue, tax policy could be a major driver of energy policy, especially if the chairmen of the House and Senate tax-writing committees launch a push for tax reform.

Obama’s allies at the Center for American Progress, a progressive Washington think tank, said in a recent report: “A progressive carbon tax would put a price on carbon pollution and other greenhouse gases, creating an economic incentive to emit less.” The revenue “could be rebated to middle- and lower-income households to offset higher energy prices” and “could boost investments in emerging clean energy technologies and/or reduce the federal deficit.”

Infrastructure

Newhouse at NAM makes the connection between jobs and infrastructure by calling on Obama to approve the building of the Keystone pipeline to bring oil from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast. “The Keystone pipeline is 118,000 jobs and it really drives the point that infrastructure matters,” Newhouse said. 

Newhouse also cited the need for Congress to pass bills reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration, modernizing the nation’s electric utility grid, and “a whole host of things in the infrastructure space that we think need additional resources.  We’re sitting in the 21^st century looking to compete internationally and we’re sitting with infrastructure that sadly is not where it needs to be.”

The havoc left by last October’s super-storm Sandy has made members of Congress – especially those from the Northeast -- take another look at using infrastructure money to help cities and town defend themselves against disaster.

The buzzword of the moment is “resilience.”

The Center for American Progress white paper on Obama’s second-term energy agenda said, “The federal government must help communities protect themselves from the future surge of extreme weather events…. Infrastructure improvements must include ‘hardening’ community shelters, water-treatment facilities, electricity transmission, roads, and other vital infrastructure.”

It added that “Clearly, cities will need assistance with these resilience efforts. The federal government should create a dedicated revenue stream for this essential purpose, which will save $4 in damages for every $1 spent on resilience.”

The group wants Obama to create a bipartisan panel of experts “to identify and recommend a reliable revenue stream for community resilience.” As the report indicates, Obama’s investment agenda for his second term may well become entangled in the debate over his second-term tax agenda and his hunt for new revenues.