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In his annual State of the Union address, President Joe Biden called on Republicans to join him in “finishing the job” of recovering the economy from the coronavirus pandemic, and jointly rebuild confidence in the political recovery. “If we could work together in the last Congress, there’s no reason we couldn’t work together in the new one,” Biden said.
Biden delivered his State of the Union, the American version of the speech from the throne in the Netherlands, this year for the first time since he became president for a US Congress that was not fully controlled by the Democratic party. Since the midterm elections last year, the Republicans have been in the majority in the House of Representatives, and they disagree with Biden on all kinds of issues: about access to abortion, the level of the national debt and the approach to illegal immigration, for example.
His call for unity was immediately tested during the speech: at passages about making health care or social security programs more accessible, he was booed or contradicted out loud by Republican members of Congress. Biden didn’t seem fazed by it.
Police brutality
Special guests at the speech were the relatives of Tire Nichols, the young man who died earlier this year after aggravated assault by police officers in Memphis. Biden used that case to call on Congress to work on tackling the police system to reduce the risk of police brutality. “Most cops are good people, risking their lives every day. But what happened to Tire happens too often. If cops or forces damage public trust, they need to be held accountable.”
The relationship with China was also discussed after the shooting down of the spy balloon last weekend. “Before I took office, the story was that China was becoming more and more powerful in the world, and that the US was sliding down. That is no longer the case. I made it clear to President Xi that we are out for competition, not conflict. We are investing to We are investing in American innovation, in industries that will shape the future, those that the Chinese government also wants to control.”
But, Biden said in a thinly veiled reference to the downed balloon, “As we made clear last week, if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And so we did.”
On the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Biden said: “We did what we do best: lead. Unite NATO and forge a global coalition. We stood up to Putin’s aggression, and we stood with the Ukrainian people.”
Democracy ‘damaged, but not broken’
Two years after the storming of the Capitol in Washington DC, where Congress sits, American democracy, according to Biden, is “damaged, but not bent and not broken”. But then, according to him, the Republicans must show that they want to cooperate with him. “The people have given us a clear signal: fighting just for the sake of fighting, power just for power and conflict just for the sake of conflict will get us nowhere.”
In previous years, Biden mainly used his State of the Union to unfold ambitious plans in the field of greening the economy and technological innovation, this year was mainly about claiming success in combating covid-19 and the creating new jobs in his presidency. At 3.4 percent, unemployment is the lowest in more than 50 years in the US.
The State of the Union was viewed by more than 38 million Americans last year, making it an important campaign tool for the incumbent president. It is widely believed that Biden will soon announce that he wants to be re-elected as president in 2024. Many party members think that is a risky move: Biden is now 80 years old, and would be 82 years old at the start of his second term.
