- Anthony Zurcher
- BBC North American correspondent
image source, Reuters
This Tuesday night, Joe Biden delivered his second State of the Union address to the United States Congress, marking the halfway point of his first term.
It is a pivotal moment for the American president: he is about to launch a re-election campaign and to deal, for the first time in his presidency, with Republican control of one of the two houses of Congress.
Here are some key takeaways from a lively and sometimes combative speech by Biden, speaking in front of a deeply divided Congress and an audience of tens of millions of Americans.
1. Call to unity
Joe Biden began by congratulating Republican Kevin McCarthy on being elected Speaker of the House of Representatives.
He then spent the first part of his speech highlighting this new political reality in Washington. The president bragged about bipartisan achievements during his first two years in office.
He pointed to cooperation on infrastructure spending, high-tech investment, military aid to Ukraine, federal protections for gay marriage and electoral reform, among other issues.
“We’re often told that Democrats and Republicans can’t work together,” he said. “But in the last two years, we’ve proven the cynics and naysayers wrong.”
Biden acknowledged that there was times when Democrats had to “walk it alone”, a phrase that glosses over the fierce partisan battles that took place over the trillion-dollar covid relief bill and the Cut Inflation Act, which increased spending to combat climate change and for health care in billions of dollars.
The president also took credit for those achievements, but the new reality is that such sweeping legislative achievements are a thing of the past, at least for the next two years. Every legislative victory Biden wins will now have to come with some Republicans on his side, a tough hurdle to overcome.
2. Attacked by the Republicans
image source, EPA
Georgia Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene reacts as President Biden delivers his speech.
While Joe Biden did his best to flaunt his bipartisan credentials during his speech, one of the most pressing challenges facing the White House and Congress in the coming months will be raising the federal borrowing limit to prevent government defaults. US national debt
On that issue, Biden and the House Republicans are engaged in a high-stakes game in which neither wants to give in and appear cowardly. And the president, in his speech, did not show signs of faltering.
Referencing Republican demands to tie a debt limit increase to spending cuts, Biden noted that no president added more to the national debt than his predecessor, Donald Trump.
Republicans responded to that claim with shouts.
Then he tried to tie the Republican demands on the debt limit with some conservative proposals to cut funding for Social Security and Medicare, the popular federally run health insurance and retirement programs.
That led to more cries of outrage from Republicans.
Biden said he would present his budget plan and asked Republicans to propose theirs. “We can sit down together and discuss both plans,” he said.
But that can be read as cheating: The goal is to put the proposed Republican cuts on the record, giving Democrats a target to attack.
The debt limit fight is just beginning, and bipartisan cooperation will almost certainly take a backseat until the storm subsides.
image source, Reuters
Biden greets Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy.
3. The guests provided emotional moments
Biden unveiled a number of new and repeated proposals, many of which have little chance of becoming law with Republican control of Congress.
He spoke emotionally about the need for police reform and new gun control legislationwhile pointing to the presidential guests in the gallery: the parents of Tire Nichols, a black man who was beaten to death by police officers a few days ago, and a hero of the mass shooting that occurred a few weeks ago in Monterey Park, California.
“All of us in the House have to rise to this moment,” he said. “We can’t walk away.”
The reality, however, is that no effort has much of a chance of success. If Congress comes together to pass new legislation, it is more likely to address “junk fees” criticized by the president, including bank surcharges, resort fees and airline seat charges.
“Junk fees may not matter to the very rich, but they matter to most people in homes like the one I grew up in,” he said.
American politicians may not agree on how to address police brutality and gun violence, but no one likes Ticketmaster’s “convenience” charges.
image source, Getty Images
4. China and Ukraine fade into the background
While the Chinese surveillance balloon was a big story in America over the weekend, it barely received a mention of the president in the bottom third of his speech.
“As we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country,” he said. “And we did.”
That was his only mention of the matter.
The president went on to discuss the challenges posed by China and his administration’s steps to strengthen the US economy and modernize the military.
But that did not represent a defiant stance against China.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which dominated Biden’s latest State of the Union address, also received barely a mention. The president welcomed Ukraine’s ambassador to the US, seated in the audience, and stressed allies’ support for the European nation.
But he did not seize the opportunity to call for new aid for the war-torn nation, something that will be harder to achieve with skeptical Republicans in control of the House.
Biden’s brief foray into foreign policy ended with some patriotism and chants of “America” from the crowd.
There is a saying that Americans only care about foreign policy when American soldiers are dying abroad. Joe Biden, with his focus on the economy and domestic achievements, seems to have taken that very seriously.
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