US must out innovate, educate and out build rising powers like India, China: Obama

Washington, Jan.26 (ANI): US President Barack Obama on Tuesday said that with nations like China and India on the rise, America had no choice but to "out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world."

"We have to make America the best place on earth to do business. We need to take responsibility for our deficit, and reform our government. That's how our people will prosper. That's how we'll win the future," Obama said in his annual State of the Union address to the US Congress.

As he drew a contrast between the US and other nations, Obama acknowledged the nation's high unemployment rate by arguing that "the world has changed" and that it is no longer so easy as it once was for Americans to find a good and secure job.

"The rules have changed," he added.

He, however, said that the United States has always possessed the resilience to rise to the challenges it has faced.

"The competition for jobs is real. But this shouldn't discourage us. It should challenge us. Remember, for all the hits we've taken these last few years, for all the naysayers predicting our decline, America still has the largest, most prosperous economy in the world," the Washington Post quoted him, as saying.He continued: "No workers are more productive than ours. No country has more successful companies, or grants more patents to inventers and entrepreneurs. We are home to the world's best colleges and universities, where more students come to study than any other place on earth."

Obama outlined initiatives in five areas: innovation; education; infrastructure; streamlining the federal bureaucracy and cutting the deficit.

He also pledged to increase the nation's spending on research and development, as a share of the total economy, to the highest levels since John F. Kennedy was president, and vowed to prepare an additional 100,000 science and math teachers by the end of the next decade.

He proposed new efforts on high-speed rail, road and airport construction and a "National Wireless Initiative" that, administration officials said, would extend the next generation of wireless coverage to 98 percent of the population. (ANI)