TUESDAY, MARCH 1 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
State of the Unionsell domestic ideas and exhibit
sunny optimism. This year, Biden
must also contend with a 40-year
record in the pace of inflation,
which he plans to address under
the rubric of “lowering costs,” ac-
cording to one person briefed on
the address, along with voter
angst driven by high crime and
lingering coronavirus restrictions.
“This is a dicey one,” Christo-
pher Dodd, former senator from
Connecticut and a close Biden
friend, said of the address. “He’ll
appreciate that this is not the
moment, given the events of the
last few days alone — forget about
covid and everything else — to go
in and try ‘Happy Days Are Here
Again.’ It would be a huge mis-
take.”
White House press secretary
Jen Psaki said Monday that the
speech will tick through ways that
Biden has tried to rally the world
against the Russian government.
She said Biden will discuss “the
importance of the United States as
a leader in the world” in this
moment and its role to stand up
for values and “global norms.”
Top White House aides, briefing
reporters on the speech Monday
afternoon on the condition of ano-
nymity, said Biden will tout the
things he accomplished in the past
year despite “deep challenges,” as
an aide put it, and outline his
aspirations for the next year. “He’ll
remind the country that our best
days lie ahead,” said another aide.
The speech will include a sec-
tion on the president’s economic
plans, including calling on Con-
gress to send him legislation de-
signed to make the United States
more competitive with China. The
White House aides offered a bliz-
zard of statistics that will be used
to sell the roughly $2 trillion bi-
partisan infrastructure plan
passed into law last year. The
funds will be used, they said, to
improve 65,000 miles of roads,
repair 1,500 bridges, do work on
600 airports and help purchase
more than 1,500 new buses, ferries
and subway cars.
Biden will also call on Congress
to increase the maximum Pell
Grant award by $2,000, raise the
BIDEN FROM A1 federal minimum wage to $15 an
hour, and create a national paid
family leave program, according
to aides. On climate change, he’ll
push for clean-energy tax credits
that were part of his stalled legis-
lative agenda, according to a
White House fact sheet sent out
late Monday.
Biden aides said he will also
address how any new plans should
be paid for. “The president will
outline proposals to make sure
that corporations and the wealthi-
est Americans pay their fair
share,” an aide said Monday.
Some specific programs have
been floated in drafts, including a
possible new push for sweeping
legislation that would provide re-
lief for military veterans suffering
illnesses from burn pits, according
to a person briefed on the speech
last week who was not authorized
to talk about it. It’s an issue deeply
personal to Biden because his son
Beau died of brain cancer after
being housed near burn pits when
he served in the military.
One early draft of the speech
also included support for an effort
to restrict members of Congress
from trading individual stocks, ac-
cording to a different person
briefed on that part of speech.
White House officials cautioned
late Sunday that the speech was
still in flux and noted that el-
ements and even major themes
sometimes get dropped from the
final version.
But on Monday, aides said the
economic portion of the address
will include making more goods in
America, reducing consumer
costs, promoting fair competition
and eliminating barriers to jobs.
During Biden’s first speech to a
joint session of Congress a year
ago, which was not an official
State of the Union address, law-
makers were prohibited from
bringing guests because of the
pandemic, a restriction that will
be in force again on Tuesday. Still,
the audience will be significantly
larger than the 200 allowed last
time in the House chamber.
Attendees are expected to in-
clude six of the nine Supreme
Court justices, after only one was
invited to attend last year’s speech.
And about 20 Cabinet officials are
scheduled to attend, according to
a person involved with the plan-
ning who spoke on the condition
of anonymity because they were
not authorized to discuss the
guest list. First lady Jill Biden’s box
could include up to eight guests,
the person said.
Under new guidance from Con-
gress’s Office of the Attending Phy-
sician sent out Sunday, lawmakers
and other attendees will not have
to wear masks. That office had
said earlier February that masks
would be required, but since then
the Biden administration shifted
health guidance to say face cover-
ings are not needed in Washing-
ton.
Meanwhile, a temporary fence
was erected over the weekend
around the Capitol to provide an
additional layer of protection
against any incursions during the
address. Conservative activists are
also planning protests against cor-
onavirus restrictions in Washing-
ton in coming days.
Despite the drumbeat of bad
news facing Biden, he will contend
that Americans broadly are better
off now than they were when he
took office, given omicron’s retreat
and the economy’s recovery, ac-
cording to two people familiar
with drafts of the speech. But
Biden also plans to speak to the
pain Americans are still feelingfrom the pandemic and higher
prices, according to one of the
people.
The president also may note the
broad opposition to Russia’s inva-
sion among Americans of both
parties to argue that the country is
not as fractured as it sometimes
appears, the adviser said. Either
way, the threat to the internation-
al order posed by Russia’s invasion
of its neighbor will be a defining
element.
“The magnitude of the visceral
reaction to what’s going on there is
so significant that it’s just hard for
me to imagine him just relegating
it to point number five,” said Mi-
chael Waldman, who helped write
four of President Bill Clinton’s
State of the Union addresses and is
now president of the Brennan
Center for Justice at New York
University School of Law. “Biden
needs to rally the democrats —
with a small ‘d’ — against the
autocrats worldwide, and he cares
a lot about that.”
Work on the speech has been
underway for months inside the
White House. Bruce Reed, Biden’s
deputy chief of staff, has been
coordinating policy initiatives to
be highlighted in the address,
while Biden aide Mike Donilon
and chief speechwriter Vinay Red-
dy have taken the lead on writing
and framing it.One person familiar with the
address said the speech appeared
designed to appeal to three groups
of voters whose support Biden
needs: moderate Democrats, inde-
pendents and “Never Trump” Re-
publicans. His approval rating has
hit the lowest point of his presi-
dency, with only 37 percent of
Americans saying they approve of
the job he is doing, according to a
Washington Post-ABC News poll
released Sunday.
Biden is particularly weak with
independents, and 61 percent of
them disapprove of his perform-
ance, according to the poll, while
59 percent said they do not believe
the president, who is 79, has the
“mental sharpness” to do his job
effectively.
As the White House seeks to
strike the right tone between tout-
ing accomplishments and ac-
knowledging pain, there has been
no shortage of outside advice. A
guest essay published in the New
York Times by David Axelrod, for
instance, urges Biden to adopt a
humble tone during the address.
“Recognize that we are still in
the grips of a national trauma,”
advised Axelrod, who was Presi-
dent Barack Obama’s chief politi-
cal strategist. The essay was circu-
lated among Biden allies, though
it’s not clear top White House
aides agree with the advice, ac-
cording to a person familiar with
the discussions who spoke on the
condition of anonymity to disclose
private dynamics.
Despite the wartime emphasis,
some parts of the speech will be
more traditional. The White
House has signaled to activists, for
instance, that Biden will use the
address to sell the $1.2 trillion
infrastructure package he signed
into law in November. He will
travel to Wisconsin soon after the
speech to highlight how funds
from the package can be used to
repair local roads and bridges.
Biden said in January that he
hoped to travel around the coun-
try more in 2022, but his events
outside of Washington have not
noticeably increased, as the White
House has been consumed with
the Ukraine crisis, selecting a Su-
preme Court nominee and other
priorities. Aides now say moretravel will come after the State of
the Union address.
White House chief of staff Ron
Klain briefed senior aides in Con-
gress on the speech last week,
telling them Biden will talk about
his plans to reduce inflation, The
Washington Post previously re-
ported. Klain made only passing
reference to the president’s “Build
Back Better” agenda, which fea-
tures new social spending and
initiatives to fight climate change,
according to two Democrats on
the call, leading some to believe
the full program will not be a
major focus of the speech.
Biden aides briefing reporters
on the speech Monday afternoon
would not say whether Biden
would mention his onetime signa-
ture legislation by name. “It’s not
about the name of the bill. It’s
about the ideas,” said one top
Biden aide.
Russia’s invasion complicates
Biden’s message in some ways,
activists said. Climate activists
have been pushing the White
House to use the speech to elevate
the need for clean energy incen-
tives and renew his call for electri-
fying the country’s transportation
system. But some said they ac-
knowledge that Biden will also
need to address the urgent spike
in gas prices resulting from the
war, which could require an in-
crease in gas supply in the im-
mediate future.
“He’ll put the near-term energy
supply first, but I do think he may
pivot, saying that current high oil
prices demonstrate exactly why
we need to move to an electrifica-
tion of our transportation sys-
tems,” said Paul Bledsoe, a stra-
tegic adviser to the Progressive
Policy Institute who was part of
Clinton’s climate team.
As a combination of a wartime
speech and a more traditional
talk, the address risks running
long, as many have in the past.
Dodd, who watched many of them
during his years in Congress from
1975 to 2011, warned against that
tendency, saying, “Sometimes the
length of the thing can obliterate
the core message.”Jeff Stein and Anna Phillips
contributed to this report.Biden revises address to highlight crisis facing democracy
BILL O’LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST
White House aides have adjusted the remarks from a focus on
fixing domestic problems to condemning the Russian invasion.