6 Key Takeaways From President Biden’s State of the Union

Posted On Mar 10, 2024 By admin With Comments Off

In one of the most anticipated speeches of the year, President Biden addressed Congress and the nation in his annual State of the Union (SOTU) address on March 7th, 2024.

Despite criticism of his most recent press coverage, Biden came out firing, giving a heartfelt speech on January 6th that addressed border security, Israel, and Roe v. Wade, and the economy. Even when his comments were in question, the President responded aggressively to naysayers.

January 6th

president biden 1 — Image Credit: The White House/Wikimedia Commons.

As President Biden addressed the nation, he didn’t hold back onformer President Trump and January 6th. His remark, “My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth about January 6th. I won’t do that,” drew plenty of mumbling in the halls of Congress and a look of irritation from Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.

Border Security

U.S - Mexico Border Wall — Image Credit: Amyyfory – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0/Wiki Commons.

One hot-button issue with both Democrats and Republicans since former President Donald Trump started building the border wall is Border Security. When President Biden proclaimed that his administration worked with a bipartisan group of senators to pass a bill “with the toughest set of border security reforms we’ve ever seen.”

Instantly, a round of negative reactions swept through the crowd, to which the President replied, “Oh, you don’t think so? Oh, you don’t like that bill, huh? That conservatives got together and said, ‘That’s a good bill…’”

One of his loudest hecklers was Marjorie Taylor Greene, who yelled out Laken Riley’s name. Twenty-two-year-old college student Laken Riley became the victim of an illegal migrant bent on murder. Until now, President Biden has avoided mentioning her case but used the moment to push for his border security policy.

Despite his boisterous remark, “We can fight about fixing the border, or we can fix it. I’m ready to fix it. Send me the border bill now,” Republicans, including Rep. Mike Johnson, don’t hold out much hope for any sort of border action from the Biden Administration.

Israel

Joe Biden speaking — Image Credit: Shutterstock.

President Biden didn’t attack Israel for the atrocities committed in Gaza against innocent civilians, saying, “Israel has the right to go after Hamas.” However, he did highlight the country’s responsibility in its war on the fighters the U.S. considers a terror group. “Israel does have a responsibility, though, to protect innocent civilians in Gaza.”

He took a moment to mention his push for a ceasefire to aid in releasing hostages. “I’ve been working nonstop to establish an immediate ceasefire that would last for six weeks to get all the prisoners, all the hostages released, to get the hostages home, and to ease the intolerable humanitarian crisis.”

Roe V. Wade

Womens rights, reproductive rights, abortion, feminist, protest, rally, march — Image Credit: Gabe Classon – CC BY 2.0/Wiki Commons.

“With all due respect, Justices, women are not without electoral or political power. You’re about to realize just how wrong you were about that,” came President Biden’s address on the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“Those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women. But they found out when reproductive freedom was on the ballot. We won in 2022 and 2020, and we’ll win again in 2024.”

Price Gauging and Shrinkflation

Jill Biden and Joe Biden — Image Credit: Gage Skidmore/WikiComms.

Touching on the economy, President Biden highlighted the importance of holding corporate America accountable by saying that “too many companies raise prices to pad their profits, charging more and more for less and less. That’s why we’re cracking down on corporations engaged in price gauging and deceptive pricing, from food to healthcare to housing. In fact, the snack companies think you won’t notice if they change the size of the bag…same size bag, put fewer chips in it. No, I’m not joking; it’s called shrinkflation.”

And after a crack about Snickers candy bars, he added, “Pass Bobby Casey’s bill and stop this.”

The economy has been a huge issue for the Biden Administration as pre-pandemic working conditions returned and inflation soared to record highs. Even as the job market continues to improve, and income rates continue to rise; inflation is still making it difficult for many families to make ends meet.

Praising his economic policies, affectionately called Bidenomics, the President said in his speech, “Wages keep going up and inflation keeps coming down.”

Mike Hamric, a senior economic analyst at Bankrate.com tempered the Presidents enthusiasm by adding, “Factually, the president is, of course, correct.” However, he added, “It is difficult to tell people that inflation isn’t so bad as it was, given that it has taken about one-fifth of purchasing power away from people.”

With the purchasing power of the dollar still struggling to recover, increasing wages and a healthy job market don’t equate to the same joyful economic outlook for many Americans.

Obvious Disdain

While Vice President Kamala Harris gave several standing ovations to President Biden’s comments, nothing could be further from the truth for Speaker Mike Johnson. For most of the SOTU speech, Johnson sat back with a look somewhere between disdain and disbelief as President Biden hit the talking points of his address to the nation. Even at the end, when President Biden admonished Congress and America to come together, Johnson wouldn’t stand in agreement and barely mustered up the energy to clap at the President’s closing remarks.

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