Fact check: Obama’s State of the Union Address 2012

(USA TODAY) — President Obama continues to battle high unemployment and frosty relations with Congress just as Americans begin to weigh whether to give him a second term. But the president made the case that the country has made notable progress on several fronts under his stewardship.

Here’s a look behind the rhetoric:

Statement:

“We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

Reality check: This isn’t the first time Obama has framed the defining societal challenge as one of economic fairness.

But Obama is proposing the more specific tax reforms to deal with the income inequality: A 30% effective income tax rate on millionaires and billionaires in what has been described as the “Buffett Rule,” and a limit to the number of deductions that households making more than $1 million can take.

“It’s interesting that what counts as wealthy has gradually moved upwards and upwards and upwards,” said Elizabeth Jacobs, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “During the campaign it was $250,000, and now it’s a millionaire or a billionaire.”

The prospects for significant individual tax reform this year are slim, which opens him up to criticism that his tax proposals are more of a campaign platform than a legislative agenda.

Statement:

“Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible, and far better, and if Iran changes course and meets its obligations, it can rejoin the community of nations.”

Reality check: Obama certainly has had his share of foreign policy successes over the last year. He followed through with a campaign promise to end the war in Iraq, a team of U.S. Navy SEALs hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May, and the U.S. supported a NATO-led operation in Libya that culminated with the ouster of Moammar Gadhafi without putting any U.S. boots on the ground.

But at least one potential national security landmine lies ahead: Iran. GOP presidential hopefuls have hammered Obama on his Iran policy, suggesting his administration has been feckless in thwarting Iran’s purported ambition to become a nuclear-armed country and was slow to embrace Iranian democracy protests in 2009.

“Iran will loom large in months ahead and the presidential election as well,” said James Phillips, a Middle East analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “This is where Obama’s foreign policy is most vulnerable.”

Statement:

“Nowhere is the promise of innovation greater than in American-made energy. Over the last three years, we’ve opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration, and tonight, I’m directing my administration to open more than 75% of our potential offshore oil and gas resources. Right now, American oil production is the highest that it’s been in eight years. That’s right – eight years. Not only that – last year, we relied less on foreign oil than in any of the past sixteen years.”

Reality check: With his call to increase efforts to increase domestic oil and natural gas production, Obama offered a rebuttal to GOP criticism of his energy security policy.

The president called for developing a “roadmap” for safe development of shale gas, which he said could support more than 600,000 jobs by the end of the decade and called for the new incentives for the private sector to upgrade equipment-which could save companies’ $100 billion over 10 years.

Republican lawmakers have lashed out at his decision to reject – for now – permitting of the 1,700 mile Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring tar sands oil from Canada to Texas. Backers of the Keystone project contend the project would create 20,000 jobs and would lessen U.S. dependence on Middle East oil.

Obama did not speak on the Keystone controversy, but he noted that the American oil production is at an eight-year high. Domestic crude oil production is expected to jump more than 20% in the coming decade, from 5.5 million barrels per day in 2010 to 6.7 million in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. U.S. dependence on foreign oil isbelow 50% for the first time in 13 years. Oil industry experts quibble with the notion that Obama should get any credit for the declining oil dependence. Lower imports are the result of lower demand caused by a sluggish economy, and growth in production is largely due comes from industry’s ability to extract tight oil from shale rock in North Dakota’s Bakken area, according to Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute.

“But for the industry’s investment and perseverance and their willingness to risk their capital resources, production would be down,” Gerard said.

Josh Freed, of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way, said that “presidents get blamed for everything under their watch, and they are also justified in taking credit for what happens under their watch.”

(Copyright 2012, USATODAY.com, USA TODAY)