News Stories

The Oklahoman - Chris Casteel

President Barack Obama challenged Congress on Tuesday to leverage the nation’s relative economic strength into a future that promised more opportunities and financial rewards for the middle class.

“Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well?” the president asked in his State of the Union speech. “Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?”

New York Times - Jeremy Peters and Emmarie Huetteman

“No” seems to be all anyone wants to say in this town anymore. In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Obama enumerated policies that he opposed, from rolling back Wall Street regulations to exempting more businesses from their obligation to provide health insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

The Oklahoman - Chris Casteel

Members of the U.S. House and Senate from Oklahoma responded Tuesday to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. All seven members of Oklahoma’s congressional delegation are Republicans.

Washington Examiner - Sean Lengell

The Republican Party toned down partisan rhetoric in its official response to the President Obama’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night, focusing on the party’s plans and ideals instead of directly responding to the administration’s agenda.

Newly elected Sen. Joni Ernst, a no-nonsense conservative from Iowa who delivered the rebuttal, portrayed a compassionate GOP that understands — and will address — the concerns, anxieties and pains of average Americans.

The Oklahoman - Chris Casteel

The start of the new Congress has been marked by familiar conflicts between Republicans and President Barack Obama, raising questions about whether the next two years will yield anything but more grid-lock.

Obama is scheduled to give a State of the Union speech Tuesday to a Congress totally controlled by Republicans for the first time in his presidency.

Roll Call - Niels Lesniewski

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair drew three standing ovations when he addressed the joint House-Senate Republican retreat Thursday with a speech that one lawmaker likened to the oratory of Winston Churchill.

New York Times - Julie Hirschfeld Davis

In the halls of the White House and the corridors of the Capitol, there was a stark dissonance last week between President Obama’s rhetoric of consensus and compromise and his confrontational actions, offering the first glimmers of the president’s strategy for engaging with a Republican Congress that holds the fate of his agenda in its hands.

On the first day of the 114th Congress, Mr. Obama sat in the Oval Office and said his message to the new Republican Congress would be, “Let’s figure out how to work together.”

Newsmax - John Blosser

Just when gas prices at the pump finally are headed downward, leave it to Congress to start eyeing an opportunity to raise more money for highway infrastructure improvements by, you guessed it, raising the gasoline tax.

However, one influential member of Congress, Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., thinks there are better ways to raise the needed money than by reaching into drivers' pockets at the filling station.