U.S. President Joe Biden is delivering his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday night amid a sour public mood.
Biden began calling on divided congress to ‘find consensus’, “The people sent us a clear message. Fighting for the sake of fighting, power for the sake of power, conflict for the sake of conflict, gets us nowhere,” Biden said, touching on the outcome of the midterm elections which saw Republicans take control of the lower chamber.
“To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together and find consensus on important things in this Congress as well.”
‘President for All Americans’
“To my Republican friends who voted against it but still ask to fund projects in their districts, don’t worry. I promised to be the president for all Americans,” Biden told the House chamber in reference to infrastructure laws. “We’ll fund your projects. And I’ll see you at the ground-breaking.”
The president also underscored that “all construction materials used on federal infrastructure products must be made in America.”
COVID-19 Pandemic No Longer ‘Controls Our Lives’
“Two years ago, COVID had shut down our businesses, closed our schools, and robbed us of so much. Today, COVID no longer controls our lives,”
Biden calls for the passage of the “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax”
“No billionaire should be paying lower tax rate than school teacher or fire fighter”
He proposes “that we quadruple the tax on corporate stock buybacks and encourage longterm investments instead.” “They will still make a considerable profit,” he added.
This is Biden’s second State of the Union speech since he took office in January 2021 and the first of its kind before a divided Congress with Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives after last year’s midterm elections and Democrats still running the Senate this term.
The primetime remarks came a week after a Gallup poll had showed that most Americans remain downbeat on the way things are going in the United States, with only 23 percent saying that they are satisfied while more than three-quarters are dissatisfied.
