WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Joe Biden (D) delivered his third official State of the Union address (fourth if you include his 2021 Address to a Join Session) on Thursday night. Republicans did not receive the speech well.
The 46th Commander-in-Chief immediately addressed issues such as the Russia-Ukraine War, abortion, and in vitro fertilization (IVF).
Additionally, President Biden attacked former President Trump (R) – whom he addressed almost solely as “my predecessor.”
As predicted by many Republicans on the Hill, Biden’s speech was not particularly unifying.
For instance, the President attacked the Supreme Court Justices for overturning Roe v. Wade. He then stated that he would attempt to codify the high court’s decision from over five decades ago.
Furthermore, Biden called for the passage of the bipartisan border security and immigration deal that was brought to the Senate Chamber in February. It was declared “dead on arrival” by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).
Republicans jeered when Biden called it the “toughest border security bill.” The President responded by mentioning that the bill was negotiated by Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma.
Representative Mike Waltz (R-FL) was frustrated that Republicans have already passed a border bill, but Democrats refuse to take it up. He also shared grievances over a lack of an objective in the foreign wars that America has funded.
“We can talk immigration. We passed HR 2 10 months ago. We can talk Israel aid. We passed it both with pay-fors and without pay-fors,” said Rep. Waltz. “And I think the Ukraine debate is incredibly frustrating in the sense of bad energy policy has Putin and Tehran flush for cash, we’re literally spending against ourselves and we have yet to hear: what does success look like? How long? How much? What’s it going to take? … We deserve some kind of strategy before we keep shoveling money out of the door.”
When asked who he thought the target audience of State of the Union was, Rep. Waltz said “His campaign team.”
“This was a campaign speech. This was as far as you could get from trying to unify the country. It was just straight-up partisanship,” said Waltz.
Moreover, Representative Jake Ellzey (R-TX) was questioned about President Biden’s economic agenda. During the speech, the President declared himself a capitalist but wanted the rich to “pay their fair share.”
Rep. Ellzey responded, “I didn’t hear a whole lot of policy ideas tonight that were capitalist. It sounded like a lot of socialism and equity to me. Folks who have been in politics for five decades have a real knack for switching definitions of what things actually are. I didn’t hear anything about capitalism tonight.”
President Biden’s speech was listed at one hour and 28 minutes according to the American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara.
