According to the Washington Post's Wonkblog Obama will make the economy a major focus of his speech tonight, and he will call for investment in new infrastructure including transportation and energy. Wonkblog writer Neil Irwin speculates this could mean that Congressional Republicans are ready to sign on to some large-scale investment — or it could mean that Obama is "tilting at windmills (literally, in this case)," notes the Post.

Irwin adds that tonight's State of the Union Address: " . . . comes as we may be approaching the end of a five year period in which investing in the nation’s physical infrastructure has been something close to a free lunch. With interest rates near all-time lows and millions of construction workers unemployed, the last few years have been a time that it would have been a historical bargain for the United States to do upgrades to roads, bridges, and airports that will eventually need to take place anyway. It has been a political breakdown—in particular conservatives’ view of almost any non-defense federal spending as wasteful—standing in the way."

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