When a president’s ballot numbers are tanking, as the newest Washington Put up/ABC Information ballot exhibits they’re for President Biden — 37 % approval — he wanted to do one thing spectacular, even radical, to maintain him from sinking additional. Sadly for Biden and his social gathering, he did nothing that’s prone to stem his free fall. Washington Put up columnist Henry Olson stated Biden’s re-hashed agenda is “lifeless on arrival” in Congress.
The opening a part of the State of the Union deal with about Ukraine appears to have been tacked on to a speech that had already been written. The phrases sounded good — freedom over tyranny was one good line — and the menace to go after Russian oligarchs might have appealed to that different warfare Democrats like to battle (that might be class warfare) — however phrases aren’t the form of weapons Ukraine wants proper now. Closing U.S. airspace to Russian flights is symbolic. Closing airspace over Ukraine could be substantive, although nobody needs a confrontation with a nuclear-armed Russia and a Vladimir Putin who seems to some to be more and more unstable.
The president stated he had an settlement with allied international locations to launch 16 million barrels of oil. He claimed that might assist drive down fuel costs. He stated nothing concerning the oil the U.S. buys from Russia, enabling it to underwrite the price of tyranny towards Ukraine.
The remainder of the speech was just about boilerplate Democrat speaking factors we’ve heard for years, together with the acquainted cost that firms and “the wealthy” aren’t paying their “justifiable share in taxes.” Why is it that Democrats by no means inform us what meaning? The federal authorities takes in report quantities of income. It’s spending that drives the debt. The president claimed he’ll lower the deficit (however not the debt) in half, however that’s onerous to imagine in gentle of his new spending proposals.
Maybe essentially the most laughable a part of the speech was his promise to “safe the border.” Quite than end constructing the wall, he needs to spend extra on “know-how” and provides “citizenship to dreamers.” How does that stem the tsunami of migrants who’ve been coming into the nation by the 1000’s? Rewarding individuals who broke the regulation to get right here solely encourages extra to return. It additionally makes a mockery of immigration and different legal guidelines the president took an oath to implement.
There was his declare that state governments are limiting “voting rights.” Actually, some imagine they’re making it simpler to vote, however tougher to cheat, because the saying goes.
Biden tossed in predictable Democratic themes, resembling defending abortion rights, “LGBTQ-plus” rights and “transgender rights.” Nothing about transgender males collaborating in girls’s sports activities.
He blamed inflation and different financial issues on the pandemic, whereas seemingly taking credit score for the decline within the variety of COVID-19 circumstances and deaths.
The president additionally threw in a proposal to spend extra on most cancers analysis (one thing President Obama assigned him to do in what was termed a “moon shot”), “fund the police, not defund the police” and scale back the price of prescribed drugs, which we had been instructed Obamacare was alleged to do. Why are these issues by no means solved? Reply: as a result of they aren’t the enterprise of presidency, although Democrats need us to imagine so. If authorities might repair these issues, would they not have been mounted by now given all of the rhetoric and spending?
These addresses could be a lot shorter if Members of Congress had been required to stay seated. By my rely, there have been 58 standing ovations (most from Democrats). The general public is perhaps higher served and fewer bored if presidents adopted the pre-television-era coverage of sending their ideas on the state of the union to Congress in writing. Sadly, that’s as prone to occur as politicians balancing the finances.
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