President Biden to deliver State of the Union

Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders will give the Republican response.

President Job Biden will deliver the annual State of the Union address Tuesday, February 7, 2023, before a joint session of Congress. It will be Biden’s first time to address the new Congress that now features a Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Republicans in the House are anxious to stall the Democrat President’s agenda. In their view, Biden’s policies are causing division in America while adding to the nation’s struggling economy as inflation remains high.

Yet, President Biden is expected to recap what his Administration views as successes over the last two years while offering a “unifying message.” Biden will tout the nation’s low unemployment rate as well as the infrastructure law that received bipartisan support as measures that show his agenda are working. Other issues Biden could promote in his speech are the Administration’s push for gun safety laws and the funding related to the “Inflation Reduction Act.”

The President will ask Congress to help him finish the job while looking ahead to contentious votes over raising the debt ceiling and other hot button issues in the months ahead in a divided Capitol. He is likely to voice his opposition to any attempts to cut social security and Medicare, even after Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy has said those cuts are off the table in debt-limit negotiations.

President Biden is also weighing a possible re-election bid next year. That announcement could come in the weeks ahead. At 80 years old, he is the oldest first-term President in U.S. history.

The White House has said changes have been made to Biden’s remarks following the incident last week involving a Chinese surveillance balloon making its way over the continental U.S. before being shot down by the military over the Atlantic Ocean. Republicans have questioned Biden’s leadership in the matter, saying the lack of immediate action showed weakness on the President’s behalf.

The Republican Response will be given by newly-elected Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Sanders is the first female to hold the state’s highest office. She is also the youngest current governor in the U.S. Sanders is the daughter a former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and was former President Donald Trump’s White House Press Secretary.

Sanders will contrast the Republicans’ “optimistic vision” against what she and her fellow conservatives view as the failures of President Biden and the Democrats in D.C.

“What America needs – and what Republicans are offering – is a return to common sense and a commitment to the ideals that made America the land of the free and home of the brave,” she wrote on Twitter last week.

In addition, Republicans are providing their response in Spanish. Speaker McCarthy has tapped Arizona Congressman Juan Ciscomani to provide those remarks.

To watch the President’s State of the Union address and the Republican Response, you can view it on C-Span here beginning at 7pm CT.