CNN 2011-02-04

Thanks, y'all! That was a cool introduction. Thank you to everyone for tuning 1 in to CNN Student News. First up today, we're making good on a promise we made yesterday to bring you this:

In fact, to every young person listening tonight who's contemplating 2 their career choice, if you want to make a difference in the life of our nation, if you want to make a difference in the life of a child, become a teacher. Your country needs you.

President Obama, speaking directly to you during Tuesday night's State of the Union address. We promised you highlights, and we've got 'em. To set the scene a little bit, the president gave his speech to a Congress that tried to display unity 3 in a couple ways. Members of different political parties sat together; usually doesn't happen during these speeches. And a lot of House members wore special ribbons to honor the victims of a recent shooting.

As for the speech itself, the president pushed for bigger investments in clean energy. He proposed a freeze on some government spending, and set a goal to hire thousands of new teachers, as you heard, by the end of the decade. President Obama's vision for how the country will move forward is a path that he says America has taken before.

The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation. None of us can predict with certainty what the next big industry will be or where the new jobs will come from. Thirty years ago, we couldn't know that something called the Internet would lead to an economic revolution. What we can do -- what America does better than anyone else -- is spark the creativity and imagination of our people. We're the nation that put cars in driveways and computers in offices; the nation of Edison and the Wright brothers, of Google and Facebook. In America, innovation doesn't just change our lives; it is how we make our living.

Republican Representative Paul Ryan gave the official response to the State of the Union. The Wisconsin congressman 4 said his party wants to work with the president and Democrats 5 to help turn around the country's economy. Representative Ryan also talked about the idea of limited government and his belief that if the government has a smaller role, it could be more effective. He said the president's approach to the role of government hasn't worked.

The president and the Democratic leadership have shown, by their actions, that they believe government needs to increase its size and its reach, its price tag and its power. Whether sold as stimulus 6 or repackaged as investment, their actions show they want a federal government that controls too much, taxes too much, and spends too much in order to do too much.