WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden will face Republicans who question his legitimacy and a public concerned about the country’s direction in Tuesday’s State of the Union speech that is expected to serve as a blueprint for a 2024 re-election bid.
In his first address to a joint session of Congress since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, Biden is expected to explain how he is trying to reshape the post-pandemic economy, highlight massive infrastructure and inflation bills passed in 2022, and stress that a bitterly-divided Congress can still make laws in the year ahead.
“I want to talk to the American people and let them know the state of affairs... what I’m looking forward to working on from this point on, what we’ve done,” Biden told reporters on Monday after returning from presidential retreat Camp David, where he spent the weekend working on the speech. Biden’s public approval rating edged one percentage point higher to 41% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Sunday. That is close to the lowest level of his presidency, with 65% of Americans saying they believe the country is on the wrong track, compared to 58% a year earlier.
In the prime-time speech, Biden will call on Congress to deepen “historic bipartisan achievements” taken last year on a “unity agenda” focused on advancing cancer research, supporting veterans and reducing their high rates of suicide, expanding mental health services overall, and beating the “opioid and overdose epidemic,” the White House said.
Reforms in policing will loom large in Biden’s speech after the death of Tyre Nichols, a Black man fatally beaten by officers in Memphis, Tennessee last month, with his mother and stepfather to be guests of first lady Jill Biden. The president will again call for Congress to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a bill named for a Black man killed under the knee of a white police officer in 2020.
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