WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden was poised to offer a sobering assessment of the state of the country rather than launch flashy policy proposals as he delivered his second State of the Union address on Tuesday night, seeking to address pessimism in the country and concerns about his own leadership.
The speech before a politically divided Congress comes as the country struggles to make sense of the cross currents at home and abroad — economic uncertainty, the grueling war in Ukraine, rising tensions with China among them — and cautiously expands its fitness Biden with the possibility. re-election bid.
The president will stand on the House rostrum when only a quarter of US adults say the country is headed in the right direction, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. About three-quarters said they were on the wrong track. And the majority of Democrats don’t want Biden to seek another term.
He would confront that sentiment, aides said, but at the same time try to be insensitive to American concerns.
Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, said Biden would “acknowledge and meet Americans everywhere,” realizing that “the economic anxiety is real.”
“I think the core message is: We need to go further, but people need to feel optimistic,” he said.
Chapman University presidential historian Luke Nichter said the closest parallel to Biden’s situation today is the 1960s, when global uncertainty met domestic unrest. Biden, he said, has the opportunity to be a “calm presence” for the country.
“Usually we’re looking for an agenda: ‘This is what we want to do.’ I don’t know if that’s really realistic,” Nichter said. “I think America’s expectations are pretty low about what Congress is going to do. So I think right now, the sentiment and the tone, and helping America feel better about its situation, I think it’s going to go a long way.
The setting for Biden’s speech will look very different from a year ago, when Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat sitting behind him, was House speaker. He has been replaced by the Republican Kevin McCarthy, and it is not clear what kind of restive reception the Republicans in the room will give the Democratic president.
McCarthy on Monday vowed to be “respectful” during the speech and asked Biden not to use the phrase “extreme MAGA Republicans,” which the president used in his 2022 campaign.
“I’m not going to tear up a speech, I’m not going to play games,” McCarthy told reporters, a reference to Pelosi’s dramatic actions after President Donald Trump’s last speech.
Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who gained a national profile as Trump’s press secretary, delivered the Republican response to Biden’s speech.
With the COVID-19 restrictions now lifted, the White House and lawmakers from both parties invited guests designed to send a political message home by being in the House chamber. The parents of Tire Nichols, who was fatally beaten by a police officer in Memphis and later died, are among those expected to sit down with first lady Jill Biden. Other Biden guests included rock star/humanitarian Bono and the 26-year-old who disarmed himself in a shooting in Monterey Park, California, last month.
Biden shifted his focus after spending his first two years pushing major bills such as a bipartisan infrastructure package, legislation to promote high-tech manufacturing and climate measures. With Republicans now in control of the House, Biden is focused on passing these sweeping laws and making sure voters credit him for the improvements.
Move from touting fresh initiatives generally by necessity. Biden faces a newly empowered GOP that is itching to undo many of his accomplishments and has vowed to pursue a raft of investigations — including seeking the discovery of classified documents from his time as vice president in his home and former office.
At the same time, Biden must find a way to work across the aisle to keep the government funded by increasing the federal debt limit this summer. Biden insisted that he would not negotiate to settle the national debt obligations; Republicans also remain convinced that Biden should make spending concessions.
On the eve of the presidential address, McCarthy challenged Biden to come to the negotiating table with House Republicans to cut spending as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling.
While hopes for large-scale bipartisanship are slim, Biden should reissue his 2022 appeal for Congress to push for a “unity agenda” to act on the opioid epidemic, mental health, veterans’ health and the fight against cancer. He should announce new executive initiatives and call on lawmakers to take action to support new measures to support cancer research, address housing and suicide needs among veterans, boost access to mental health care, and move more toward the fentanyl trade. kill.
The White House said the president would extend the new $35 monthly price cap for insulin for people on Medicare to everyone in the country. He will also push Congress to quadruple the percent tax on corporate stock buybacks imposed in the Democratic climate and the health care bill passed last year known as the Inflation Reduction Act.
The speech came days after Biden ordered the military to shoot down suspected Chinese spy balloons flying across the country, stunning the country and serving as a reminder of strained relations between the two global powers.
Last year’s address came just days after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine and many in the West doubted Kyiv’s ability to withstand the onslaught. In the past year, the US and other allies have sent tens of billions of dollars in military and economic aid to bolster Ukraine’s defenses. Now, Biden must make the case — at home and abroad — to keep the coalition together as the battle drags on.
“The president really wants to reinforce what we’ve achieved and then reinforce what we have to do, how committed we are to doing it, and how we’re asking on a bipartisan basis the US Congress to join us in doing that work,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on Monday. .
As COVID-19 subsides at home, Biden will turn to other national ills, including the deadly opioid epidemic, gun violence and police abuse. A White House fact sheet ahead of the speech paired police reform with reducing violence, suggesting that giving police better training tools could reduce crime nationwide.
The president spent the weekend through Monday reviewing drafts of his speech with aides at the president’s Camp David retreat in Maryland.
Senior White House Counsel Anita Dunn will preview the themes of Biden’s speech to Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday, beginning with a breakfast with House Democrats on Capitol Hill.
McCarthy called on Biden to complete Republican efforts to put the state’s finances on the path to a balanced budget, which would require deep and politically unpopular cuts in federal spending that Biden and Democrats oppose.
“We must go to a balanced budget and insist on genuine responsibility for every dollar we spend,” McCarthy said.
He insisted cuts to Medicare and Social Security, popular health and pension programs especially for older Americans, are “not on the table” in any budget negotiations. The GOP leader also said “defaulting on our debt is not an option.”
The White House insisted that Republicans could not be trusted to protect the program and blasted Republicans for “threatening to actively throw our economy into a tailspin by default” by imposing the debt limit.
AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
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