WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ SU K A
STATE OF THE UNIONBY TONY ROMM
AND ABHA BHATTARAIPresident Biden on Tuesday
sought to assuage Americans’
worries about the trajectory of
the U.S. economy, pledging in his
first-ever State of the Union ad-
dress that his “top priority is
getting prices under control” at a
moment of intense inflation.
Speaking from the dais of the
House, Biden began by emphasiz-
ing that jobs have returned, wag-
es have risen and the country has
resumed many of its daily
rhythms under his watch, rough-
ly two years after the coronavirus
pandemic touched off the worst
economic crisis since the Great
Depression.
But the president also ac-
knowledged that millions of
Americans still face financial
hardships, particularly as the
cost of groceries, gasoline, cars
and rents has skyrocketed in
what has become the fastest peri-
od of inflation in four decades. On
a day when geopolitical tumult
threatened additional shocks,
Biden promised fresh vigilance in
Washington to protect families at
risk of falling further behind.
“With all the bright spots in our
economy, record job growth and
higher wages, too many families
are struggling to keep up with
their bills,” Biden said. “Inflation
is robbing them of the gains they
might otherwise feel.”
“I get it,” Biden continued.
“That’s why my top priority is
getting prices under control.”
Specifically, Biden called on
Congress to support a number of
economic initiatives, including
efforts to provide monthly tax
payments for families with chil-
dren and legislation to raise the
minimum wage for millions of
workers. The president voiced
anew his plans to address log-
jams in “global supply” that have
driven up demand for some
goods, leading to higher prices.
And he promised to combat cor-
porate conglomerates, which he
said may be squeezing consumers
through price gouging.
Many of Biden’s ideas originat-
ed in blueprints he has unveiled
since assuming the presidency,
including a signature initiative
known as the Build Back Better
Act, which ultimately faltered
last year because of still-simmer-
ing divisions among his fellow
Democrats.
Other ideas were newer, in-
cluding a fresh effort to ensure
that trillions of dollars in existing
federal spending — approved to
combat the coronavirus pandem-
ic — did not fall into the hands of
criminals. The promise arrived
amid a slew of reports about the
vast and expanding scope of pan-
demic-related fraud.
But Biden’s move to recast
many of his embattled initiatives
reflected a tactical reset at a time
when Americans have grown
worried about the economy and
his handling of it. And it reflected
a looming political imperative for
Democrats, broadly, who secured
control of the nation’s corridors
of power by promising major
change — a standard to which
they may be held entering the
2022 midterm elections.
“It’s not too late to meet this
moment,” a group of top House
Democrats told Biden in an open
letter Tuesday. Its backers includ-
ed the leaders of some of the
chamber’s top voting blocs, in-cluding Reps. Pramila Jayapal
(D-Wash.) of the left-leaning Con-
gressional Progressive Caucus
and Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.)
from the more centrist-minded
New Democratic Coalition.
“There is broad consensus on
the most critical solutions Ameri-
cans need to lower costs for
families, tackle the climate crisis,
and create opportunities and
good-paying jobs,” they added. “It
is time to act.”
In Republicans’ rebuttal, tele-
vised after Biden spoke, Iowa
Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) blamed
the president and his Democratic
allies in Congress for “runaway
inflation” resulting from their
significant uptick in spending.
“It feels like Biden and his
party have sent us back in time —
to the late ’70s and early ’80s.
When runaway inflation was
hammering families, a violent
crime wave was crashing on our
cities, and the Soviet army wastrying to redraw the world map,”
Reynolds said.
To open his State of the Union,
Biden instead spoke at length
about the conflict in Europe. He
promised to aid Kyiv as lawmak-
ers readied potentially $10 billion
in humanitarian and military as-
sistance, just days after the White
House urged Congress to act
swiftly to provide billions in sup-
port. The president also pointed
to Washington’s work alongside
Europe in imposing unprec-
edented and sweeping sanctions
on Russia for invading Ukraine,
meting out punishments that ad-
ministration officials have ac-
knowledged could have spillover
efforts globally.
Illustrating the point, the Dow
Jones industrial average tumbled
nearly 600 points just hours be-
fore Biden spoke late Tuesday.
The conflict also threatened to
intensify a recent spike in gas
prices, further cutting into Amer-icans’ budgets and leaving them
discouraged about the economy
and its direction.
Biden still stressed the coun-
try’s recent gains in combating
the toll of the coronavirus. He
touted the adoption of the
$1.9 trillion American Rescue
Plan last March, for example,
which he said had “created over
6.5 million new jobs just last year,
more jobs created in one year
than ever before in the history of
America.” And Biden seized on
the national stage to remind vot-
ers about his toils alongside Dem-
ocrats and Republicans to secure
$1 trillion in long-sought invest-
ments to improve the nation’s
infrastructure.
But Biden took care to stress
that Washington still faced con-
siderable work to ease the fuller
array of financial burdens facing
American families, particularly
as a result of inflation. He urged
Congress to raise the nationalminimum wage to $15 an hour
from $7.25, where it has remained
since July 2009. He renewed calls
for a paid family and medical
leave program for millions of
Americans who do not have it. He
endorsed an increase in Pell
Grants for low-income students
attending college. And Biden pe-
titioned lawmakers to revive a
program that provided monthly
payments to families with young
children. The previous, expanded
child tax credit program expired
at the end of last year.
“When we invest in our work-
ers, when we build the economy
from the bottom up and the
middle out together, we can do
something we haven’t done in a
long time: build a better Ameri-
ca,” Biden said.
Biden also highlighted a new,
separate administrative initiative
to keep closer watch over roughly
$6 trillion in coronavirus aid
approved since the start of the
pandemic. Much of the money
had been approved on a biparti-
san basis beginning under Presi-
dent Donald Trump before Dem-
ocrats adopted a $1.9 trillion
rescue package that counted as
Biden’s first major legislative
achievement.
Under the effort, Biden said he
would bolster the Justice Depart-
ment and its enforcement against
fraud and identity theft, includ-
ing through the appointment of a
chief prosecutor to oversee relat-
ed investigations. And the presi-
dent called on Congress to tough-
en penalties against “egregious”
misuse of these emergency funds.
Much of Biden’s economic
agenda is likely to draw opposi-
tion from Republicans, who pre-
viously have rejected many of
Biden’s economic plans — and
affirmed their stance in the hours
before the president spoke.
But Democrats on Tuesday cast
the speech as an important inflec-
tion point, a time for Biden to
champion recent, significant suc-
cesses while rekindling the de-
bate around his stalled policy
agenda.
“The road has not been easy
and certainly the work is not yet
done. The pain of inflation is
being felt around the world,
thanks, largely, to the disruptions
of the pandemic,” said Senate
Majority Leader Charles E. Schu-
mer (D-N.Y.) in a speech earlier in
the day. “These problems must be
handled, and Democrats and the
Biden administration continue to
work on them like a laser.”Biden promises to make inflation battle his ‘top priority’
CRAIG HUDSON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Students at a watch party in D.C. as President Biden arrives for his first-ever State of the Union on Tuesday. Biden opened his address w ith
the conflict in Europe, promising to aid Ukraine and pointing to Washington’s work in imposing sweeping sanctions on Russia.BY AARON BLAKEPresident Biden delivered his
first State of the Union address
Tuesday night, after a year
marked by continued struggles
with the coronavirus pandemic,
declining electoral fortunes for
him and his fellow Democrats
and, now, Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine.
Some takeaways:
- Seizing on b ipartisanship
related to Ukraine
One of Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s greatest tricks
has been uniting Republicans
and Democrats behind one
broadly shared goal: opposing
him. And at the start of Tuesday’s
speech, Biden grabbed that op-
portunity to rally the parties be-
hind their common cause.
Biden earned particularly
widespread and sustained ap-
plause for a couple of related
lines.
“Members of the European
Union, including France, Ger-
many, Italy, as well as countries
like the United Kingdom, Canada,
Japan, Korea, Australia, New Zea-
land and many others — even
Switzerland — are inflicting pain
on Russia and supporting the
people of Ukraine,” Biden said,
adding: “Putin is now isolated
from the world more than he has
ever been.”
Shortly thereafter, Biden
pointed to the Justice Depart-
ment’s move to go after Russian
oligarchs, as well as joint efforts
with European allies to seize their
assets, including yachts.
“Tonight, I say to the Russian
oligarchs and the corrupt leaders
who bilk billions of dollars off this
violent regime: No more,” Biden
said. He added: “I mean it,” and,
“We’re coming for you.”
While Russia’s invasion has fu-
eled some bipartisanship, there
remain some divides on precisely
what to do or what should have
been done — particularly about
our energy supply and related
sanctions on things like the Nord
Stream 2 pipeline. But Biden opt-
ed not to dwell on the specifics
and instead focused on our sud-
den and rare unity of cause.
It was in line with much of the
speech.- Trying to speak
Republicans’ language
Indeed, Biden’s speech was rel-
atively light on truly divisive is-
sues, save for a brief list of items
near the end that included abor-
tion, immigration reform and
transgender rights, and another
section on climate change. And at
plenty of points in his speech, he
seemed to be trying to speak to
issues that are dear to Republi-
cans — and perhaps even disaf-
fected Democrats.
He hailed the decline in school
and business closures amid the
pandemic, as well as the Centers
for Disease Control and Preven-
tion’s recent decision to ease
guidance on mask-wearing. He
noted “most Americans and most
of the country can now go mask-
free” — as he sat in front of two
Democrats, Vice President Harris
and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
(Calif.) who, notably, were with-
out masks.
“Let’s use this moment to reset.
So stop looking at covid as a
partisan dividing line,” Biden
said. He added: “Fellow Ameri-
cans: Look, we can’t change how
divided we’ve been ... but we can
change how to move forward on
covid-19 and other issues that we
must face together.”
As in his speech to Congress
last year, he made a point to say
he wasn’t taking his eye off the
threat that China poses — partic-
ularly as the world’s attention
focuses on Russia.
He served notice to the rela-
tively small portion of his party
that has pushed the “defund the
police” effort, saying, “We should
all agree: The answer is not to
defund the police; it’s to fund the
police,” he said, before ad-libbing:
“Fund them. Fund them.” GOP
leaders stood and applauded.
Biden also directly tackled an
issue that is perhaps his most
troubling on the economic front:
inflation. He said: “Inflation is
robbing [people] of the gains they
might otherwise feel,” and he
went so far as to call it his “top
priority.”
All of these point to fears about
how Democrats have allowed
themselves to be defined ahead of
what looks to be an arduousmidterm election cycle. And as
with other elements of the
speech, it seemed aimed precisely
at voters who have soured on his
party.- ‘Build Back Better’ goes
without direct mention
There were a few words nota-
bly missing from Biden’s speech:
“Build Back Better.”
It has been pretty clear for a
while now that the signature
package is going nowhere in Con-
gress — particularly as we turn to
an election year in which passing
legislation is much more difficult.
But the White House and Demo-
crats have been slow to concede
that. Tuesday marked a signifi-
cant shift away from it.
Biden cited other bills he want-
ed passed, including the Biparti-
san Innovation Act, the Freedom
to Vote Act, the John Lewis Voting
Rights Act and the Disclose Act,
along with some more technical
changes, but not Build Back Bet-
ter, a multitrillion-dollar propos-
al to revamp or bolster child care,
education, health care and cli-
mate change programs. When it
came to large-scale legislation, he
focused much more on the ben-
efits of what has already passed,
including the Bipartisan Infra-
structure Law and the American
Rescue Plan.
Biden still spoke to the priori-
ties contained in Build Back Bet-
ter, including energy, housing,
child care and cutting prescrip-
tion drug costs. But it seemed this
was now more of a messaging
exercise than a true legislative
effort. We’ll see how hard he trulypushes it — and how the shift in
emphasis is greeted by liberals
who have been wanting to double
down on Build Back Better.- Unfortunate and puzzling:
A shouted GOP attack
It was 13 years ago that parti-
sanship boiled over at a presiden-
tial speech — what’s generally a
pretty staid occasion — with a
Republican congressman yelling
“You lie!” at President Barack
Obama.
On Tuesday night, one of the
most extreme House Republicans
tried to rip a page out of that
congressman’s playbook. She just
chose a pretty unfortunate and
puzzling time.
Biden launched into talking
about looking into the impact of
“burn pits” on American soldiers.
It was clear where this was head-
ed: Biden was going to talk about
the possibility that this played a
role in the death of his son, Beau
Biden.
As he was getting to that point,
he mentioned how “many of the
world’s finest and best-trained
warriors in the world [were] nev-
er the same — headaches, numb-
ness, dizziness, a cancer that
would put them in a flag-draped
coffin.”
It was this moment that Rep.
Lauren Boebert of Colorado
chose to register her own at-
tempted “You lie!” moment. She
attacked Biden for the chaotic
withdrawal from Afghanistan —
“You put them in, 13 of them,” she
said, in response to his “flag-
draped coffin” remark — even
though Biden wasn’t talking
about combat deaths. The “can-
cer” he had just mentioned was
an obvious reference to what
killed his son, as the prepared
remarks sent out by the White
House made clear.
Boebert drew a smattering of
boos, and Biden continued speak-
ing, staring in one direction as he
mentioned Beau Biden in the very
next sentence.
ANALYSIS
Four takeaways from president’s address, which ran hot and cold with GOP
EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/REUTERS
Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), right, shout “Build the wall!” as
President Biden addresses lawmakers Tuesday night on Capitol Hill.Ukraine, covid changes,
support for police among
well-received topics