By: Ernest Gurulé
A State of the Union address is always going to be a challenge. It’s like showing up for a party in your honor where half the guests are happy to be there, and the other half want to be there only to criticize everything you have to say. Also, like all parties, there’s always a couple of drunks in attendance. The 98th such address played out to form.
It was President Woodrow Wilson who began the tradition of showing up in person to give what has become an annual rite of passage. The purpose is to report to the Congress and country on the nation’s economic and mili- tary health, past year’s accomplishments and plans and priorities for the upcoming year.
No surprise, President Biden led off the 2022 speech with self-congratulatory words on the nation’s accomplishments with COVID-19, the virus that has claimed more than 900,000 American lives and last year caused the postponement of the 2021 address. But he quickly pivoted to the crisis now plaguing the world.
“Six days ago,” began the President, “Russia’s Vladimir Putin sought to shake the very foundations of the free world,” with his unprovoked attack on Ukraine, Russia’s neighbor to the west. “He thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over.” Instead, said Biden, Putin met a wall of strength. “He met the Ukrainian people.” Introducing Ukraine’s ambassador, sitting as a guest of First Lady Jill Biden, the President asked for a Congressional round of applause. It was one of the few times the entire body rose in agreement.
While the President was upbeat on the strength of the Eastern European nation, Russia has been unrelenting, bombing residential area, killing innocent civilians, forcing an exodus into neighboring countries—perhaps a million or more—and even targeting a nuclear power plant endanger- ing not only Ukraine but all of Europe.
Like his predecessors, all of whom share the ups and downs that come with the job, the last year for President Biden has been no different. Inflation has made his policies easy targets for Republicans, but job creation has provided a degree of economic balance. Gas prices have risen, but unemployment is near record lows.
Democrats cheered the President’s announcement that “this year we will start fixing over 65,000 miles of highway and 1,500 bridges in disrepair,” an undertaking that will not only address aging infrastructure issues but also put to work thousands of Americans across the country.
To further bolster the economy, the President urged the nation’s industries to focus on “investing in America,” and not relying on China for parts and scores of other things that can be built right here at home. Doing so, he indicated, would address supply chain issues that have resulted in computer chip shortages affecting everything from auto manufacturing to consumer electronics to everyday home appliances.
While well from a full-throated embrace of the Green New Deal, President Biden also urged Americans to invest in more efficient means of heating and cooling homes and businesses. To incentivize this approach, he dangled the promise of investment tax credits. He also urged more research and development of wind and solar energy as a means of making the nation more energy efficient.
One big applause line from the President was his plea “to cut the cost of childcare,” an issue that is both perplexing and unaffordable in communities across the country. “If you live in a major city in America,” he said, “you pay up to $14,000 for childcare per child.” Middle class and others making less, said the President, “should not have to pay more than seven percent of their income to care for the young children.”
Colorado’s congressional delegation, not surprisingly, heard different speeches. Democratic Representative Diana DeGette, the state’s senior member of Congress, thought the President “projected strength we need during this time of international crisis.” She also applauded his call for lower- ing the cost of prescription drugs and capping the price on insulin. Senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper also gave Biden high marks.
Bennet praised the President for the speech’s almost immediate call for Ukraine support and his close, a call for unity. Hickenlooper was effusive in praising the President for the way he’s united European nations, including a tra- ditionally neutral Switzerland, and other nations behind Ukraine.
Boulder Democratic Congressman Joe Neguse, who district experienced one of 2021’s massive gun violence episodes, cheered the President’s call for “universal background checks…to removing the liability protections for gun manufacturers.” Republicans sat silently or offered only tepid applause for any of these things.
But the behavior of one member of Colorado’s congres- sional delegation captured a momentary spotlight that dis- played not only boorishness but a degree of ignorance few in the body have ever put on full display. Third Congressional District freshman Lauren Boebert stood up and aped her displeasure with Biden as he spoke of veterans, including his late son Beau, who’ve contracted a form of cancer whose genesis may have come from burn pits in Afghanistan or Iraq.
As he landed on this point, Boebert interrupted Biden to yell, “You put them in. Thirteen of them.” Her reference was to the soldiers killed when a bomb exploded at the Kabul airport last August as the U.S. was evacuating Afghanistan civilians who aided America during the war. Boebert’s State of the Union outburst was just the latest in a string of atten- tion grabbing moment in her brief career.
Boebert, playing to the crowd, also wore a red dress and black shawl with the words, “Drill, Baby, Drill,” on it. Her district includes areas where fossil fuels have been extracted for years and where her husband earns his living. Republican Congressman Ken Buck also echoed similar sen- timents. “We should be producing natural gas in Colorado,” said Buck.
While Democrats gave the President plaudits for his speech, there was also a subdued reaction from his party for his omission of anything on voting rights, an issue that is being exploited across the country by Republicans. To date, 19 states controlled by Republican legislatures have passed 33 laws that will make it harder, especially for Black and Brown voters, to cast a ballot in November.
