U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a State of the Union address on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Tuesday, March 1, 2022.
Saul Loeb | Bloomberg | Getty Images
U.S. President Joe Biden will face a divided Congress and stubbornly high inflation when he delivers the annual State of the Union address later Tuesday night.
U.S. job growth, the war in Ukraine, the rise in domestic manufacturing, the continuing pandemic and America’s strategic competition with China will dominate the speech, in response to White House aides who outlined his comments.
Tuesday shall be the primary time since 2019 that the president and congressional leaders are permitted to bring guests to the event, which is attended by every member of the House and Senate, all nine Supreme Court Justices, a lot of the president’s Cabinet and the diplomatic corps.
It would even be the primary time that Biden gives the historic speech before a divided Congress after Republicans clenched control of the U.S. House in November’s midterm elections.
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California will sit behind Biden’s left shoulder on the dais during his address as an alternative Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Vice President Kamala Harris will sit next to McCarthy.
For Biden, there’s lots riding on his ability to attach together with his audience this yr. His approval rankings are holding regular at 45%, in response to essentially the most recent NBC News polling.
Despite record job growth and recent data indicating that inflation is slowing, Americans remain deeply pessimistic concerning the state of the economy.
They blame Biden for rising rates of interest and so they worry a few possible recession. The NBC poll found that only 36% of U.S. adults approved of Biden’s handling of the economy.
Along with economic woes, the debt ceiling deadline later this yr looms over Washington. It would require Biden to barter with the newly elected Republican majority within the House, who’ve demanded deep spending cuts before they may conform to pass a debt ceiling hike.
Biden also faces opposition overseas.
Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine is entering its second yr with tens of hundreds of casualties and no end in sight. While Russia poses an urgent threat to world peace, China presents a fair longer and trickier challenge to the USA.
This was compounded by the high-altitude Chinese surveillance balloon that moved over the USA within the last week before it was shot down by the U.S. military.
Biden will address the U.S.-China relationship within the speech, but he won’t announce recent retaliatory actions against Beijing over the balloon, White House aides told NBC News.
Following Biden’s address, Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders will deliver the GOP response to the speech. This shall be followed by a Republican Spanish-language response, delivered by the newly elected Rep. Juan Ciscomani of Arizona.