President Joe Biden was optimistic about the United States’ ability to solve its long-standing problems in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, even though he had contributed to those very problems for half a century.
The need to revitalize manufacturing was highlighted by President Biden, who applauded President Trump’s decision to end NAFTA and renegotiate a new trade accord with Mexico and Canada as a major start in the right direction (USMCA).
Since Biden supported NAFTA and granted China MFN status, manufacturing employment has declined dramatically.
After fifty years in politics, the president used his State of the Union speech to once again rail against the unfairness of the tax system. Biden has made it apparent that, in his opinion, the tax system is slanted in favor of the rich and corporations, who can take advantage of loopholes to pay less tax, if any. Whether or not that’s the case (and it is the case that high earners often pay a higher percentage of taxes), Biden has extensive knowledge of the tax system.
After supporting the 1994 crime bill linked to mass incarceration, Biden has spoken out on the need for change within the police force.
His promise of “unity” came after he had spent the previous two years accusing Republicans of wanting to institute “Jim Crow 2.0” through vote integrity legislation. He blamed Republicans on Tuesday night for the violent attack on Paul Pelosi, which he claimed was carried out by a crazed hippie who had entered the country illegally and been shielded by Democrats in a “sanctuary city.”
President Biden was heckled and booed by Republicans as he repeated the false claim that Republicans planned to abolish Social Security and Medicare and that we’re leveraging the debt ceiling crisis to accomplish so. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) did make some efforts to strengthen Social Security and Medicare, which have been underfunded for decades (not to end them but to save them). However, this is no longer the case, and they are now secure.
Biden and his Congressional colleagues made these programs more vulnerable by failing to adapt to a changing population and by criticizing those who advocated for change.
Similarly, price increases. Biden has been quite vocal about the decrease in inflation. Upon taking office, he wasted no time in spending lavishly on the so-called “treatment” of the coronavirus, sending healthcare costs into a tailspin. The swift suspension of the Keystone XL project and the administration’s unprecedented antipathy to the oil and gas sector were big factors in driving up gas prices, even if they had declined dramatically from their summer highs.
China’s deployment of a surveillance balloon to watch the rest of the world was mentioned by President Biden, but he downplayed the threat it posed. He exaggerated the degree to which his administration had fought the threat, saying that they had done so long before the balloon had returned home. “Before I came to office, the news was about how the People’s Republic of China was extending its power and America was slipping in the globe,” Biden said, implying falsely that Trump had neglected the problem.
Trump was the first president to take a clear position against China, in contrast to Biden’s decades-long attempts to include China in international society.
People who don’t share Biden’s political beliefs praised his speech for its upbeat message. A perfect world would be one in which the American people come together to tackle the massive work of restoring the damage done by Biden’s extended term in government.