Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) issued the following statement on President Obama’s State of the Union address:

“President Obama touched on some areas vital to California’s future. I applaud the President for calling for a clean power standard of 80 percent by 2035, just the kind of forward-looking, job-creating initiative we should embrace. And he set a bold objective of giving 80 percent of Americans access to high-speed rail. In these areas California is a trailblazer, setting the pace for the country to follow.

The President is right: the rules have changed. And I think he hit exactly the right notes by focusing on job creation, economic growth and competitiveness. And he wisely called for us to redouble our efforts to improve our education system, including hiring 100,000 new teachers, boosting college graduation rates, and retaining our smartest graduates.

I think the best thing the President did was explain the transition of the economy so the average person can understand it. But I was disappointed by the absence of an overall formula to deal with the very serious and worsening deficit. He is correct that we can’t solve this problem solely through discretionary spending, but we’ll need many more specifics as we move forward.”

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