Obama focuses on economy in speech President Obama will appear before a divided Congress Tuesday night for his first State of the Union speech of his second term, an address expected to focus on the economy while touching on the war in Afghanistan, gun violence and other administration priorities. Three months after his convincing reelection victory, the President intends to return to the economic issues that dominated much of his first term, White House officials have said. With a theme of strengthening the middle class, he will discuss programs to create jobs and propose spending public money on education, manufacturing and infrastructure, acccording to a set of White House talking points. Most guests invited to sit in a first lady's box during the State of the Union represent a point the president wants to make through his speech. Find out who sat with Michelle Obama in previous years and why they were there. Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake Natalie Jennings Nugent, a rock star and gun rights advocate, will be the guest of a Texas congressman. "It is our generation's task, then, to reignite the true engine of America's economic growth - a rising, thriving middle class,"" Obama plans to say, according to excerpts released by the White House. "It is our unfinished task to restore the basic bargain that built this country - the idea that if you work hard and meet your responsibilities, you can get ahead, no matter where you come from, what you look like, or who you love."" Obama will also turn to a foreign policy issue that has sparked intense debate within his administration. He intends to announce in his speech that he is ordering the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to be reduced by more than half over the next 12 months, according to an administration official. The president's decision - to remove 34,000 of the 66,000 U.S. troops in the country by this time next year - sets a quicker pace for withdrawl than top military commanders had been seeking, according to U.S. officials. In the Republican response, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) is also expected to focus on the middle class, but from a different perspective and with criticism for Obama's approach. This opportunity - to make it to the middle class or beyond no matter where you start out in life - it isn't bestowed on us from Washington. It comes from a vibrant free economy,"" Rubio plans to say, according to excerpts released by his office. "Presidents in both parties... have known that our free enterprise economy is the source of our middle class prosperity,"" Rubio will say. But President Obama? He believes it's the cause of our problems. The newly reelected commander-in-chief is appearing before Congress and millions of television viewers at a time when he is relatively strong politically yet vexed by a series of pressing challenges. Though Obama's popularity is up in recent polls, he faces an economy that is still lagging and a national unemployment rate that ticked up last month. There are also new threats on the horizon, with Democrats and Republicans locked in sometimes acrimonious debate over the federal debt ceiling, a series of automatic spending cuts scheduled to take effect in March and a possible government shutdown. In his address, the president will again discuss his plans to avoid the automatic cuts - known as the sequester - with what he calls a more balanced approach of more targeted cuts and spending, and requiring the wealthy "to pay their fair share,"" according to the talking points.