President Joe Biden will appeal for bipartisan congressional breakthroughs in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, saying that the country’s economy and democratic institutions are on the mend and shouldn’t stall in a divided Congress.
(Bloomberg) — President Joe Biden will appeal for bipartisan congressional breakthroughs in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, saying that the country’s economy and democratic institutions are on the mend and shouldn’t stall in a divided Congress.
Biden will deliver his speech to a joint session of Congress, facing gridlock among lawmakers, a showdown over the debt ceiling and renewed tensions with China.
The speech — also a de facto soft-launch of an expected reelection campaign — will reprise many familiar Biden themes, including a push to bolster the middle class. In excerpts released Tuesday evening, he urged Congress to come together, despite partisan differences.
“To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together in this new Congress. The people sent us a clear message,” Biden will say, according to prepared remarks released by a spokesperson. “Fighting for the sake of fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict, gets us nowhere.”
The White House has signaled that the speech will include a series of new executive actions and a list of proposals to Congress, including raising a tax on stock buybacks, a minimum tax on billionaires and a law banning targeted advertising online for children and young people, among others. Other guests invited by the administration hinted at likely legislative pushes on abortion rights and an assault weapons ban. All are unlikely to pass the current, divided Congress.
Biden will also tout his accomplishments and legislative victories in the last Democratic-controlled Congress at a time when polls indicate voters are giving him little credit for it. More than six in 10 Americans don’t believe the president has accomplished much during his first two years in office, despite Congress’s passage of major legislation under Democratic control, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted between Jan. 27 and Feb. 1.
He will also reprise so-called “unity agenda” efforts from the speech a year earlier, including efforts to curb opioid use and deaths. Biden will announce a diplomatic push to curb the inflow of fentanyl, though it’s not clear if he will single out China, a source of materials used to produce fentanyl.
Biden is navigating heightened tensions with the world’s second-biggest economy, after the downing of an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon on Saturday.
Biden will nod to his push to expand the middle class, and to bipartisan victories, like laws expanding infrastructure spending and subsidizing domestic production of semiconductor chips. He will tailor his economic pitch to smaller communities who’ve seen major businesses shuttered.
“Maybe that’s you watching at home. You remember the jobs that went away. And you wonder whether a path even exists anymore for you and your children to get ahead without moving away. I get it,” Biden will say, according to the prepared remarks. “That’s why we’re building an economy where no one is left behind.”
In another excerpt, Biden will stress that the Covid pandemic is largely behind the US and tout job gains — which some analysts say are a headwind to the Federal Reserve’s efforts to ease inflation, and may raise the chances of further rate hikes and a recession.
“We are the only country that has emerged from every crisis stronger than when we entered it,” Biden will say.
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