Key takeaways from Biden’s State of the Union address

Joe Biden at the State of the Union address

On Tuesday night, Joe Biden delivered his third speech to Congress — halfway through his first term.

It’s a pivotal moment for the President, and he delivered a spirited and at times combative speech. It comes as he is poised to launch a re-election campaign and grapple with Republican control of a chamber of Congress for the first time in his presidency.

Here are some key takeaways from his evening in the spotlight, speaking to a fiercely divided Congress and an audience of tens of millions of Americans.

A call to unity

Joe Biden began his speech by congratulating Republican Kevin McCarthy on his election as Speaker of the House.

He then spent the first part of his State of the Union address reflecting this new political reality in Washington. The president boasted about cross-party achievements in his first two years in office. Among other things, he pointed to cooperation on infrastructure spending, high-tech investments in microchip production, military aid to Ukraine, federal protection of gay marriage and electoral reform.

“We’re often told that Democrats and Republicans can’t work together,” he said. “But over the last two years we’ve proved the cynics and the naysayers wrong.”

Mr. Biden acknowledged there were times when Democrats had to “go it alone” — a line that glosses over the fierce partisan fighting that has taken place over the trillion-dollar Covid relief bill and inflation-cutting bill that cut climate and health spending Billions increased from dollars.

Again, those achievements have been attributed to the President, but the new reality is that such sweeping legislative achievements are a thing of the past — at least for the next two years. Any legislative victory Mr. Biden achieves must now be won with Republicans on his side — a formidable obstacle to overcome.

Sharing about debt and late payments

While Joe Biden did his best to brush up on 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 accommodate a US default on its national debt to avoid.

On this issue, Mr. Biden and House Republicans are engaged in a high-stakes chicken game. And the president showed no sign of blinking in his speech — and may have jabbed his Republican counterparts in the eyes.

Referring to Republican calls for tying a debt ceiling increase to spending cuts, Mr. Biden noted that no president has contributed more to the national debt than his predecessor, Donald Trump.

The Republicans reacted to this line with howls of derision.

Then he tried to combine Republican calls for the debt limit with some conservative proposals to cut Social Security and Medicare — the popular state pension and health insurance programs.

This led to even more howls of indignation.

Mr. Biden said he would present his budget and urged Republicans to propose theirs. “We can sit down and discuss both plans,” he said.

It’s a small trap, of course. The goal is to get the proposed Republican cuts on the record — and give the Democrats a target to attack.

The battle over the debt ceiling has only just begun – and bipartisan cooperation will almost certainly take a backseat until the storm has passed.

This story will be updated.

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