Biden Seeks Shift in How the Nation Serves Its
People
The president’s costly proposals amount to a risky
gamble that a country polarized along ideological and cultural lines is ready
for a more activist government.
TRANSCRIPT
President Biden’s Joint Session Address
President Biden addressed a joint session of Congress
on Wednesday, calling for bold government action to address the nation’s
challenges.
[Applause]
Now, after just 100 days, I can report to the nation, America is on the move
again. We have to do more than just build back better. We have to compete more
strenuously than we have. Nearly 90% of the infrastructure jobs created in
American Jobs Plan do not require a college degree. 75% don’t require an
associate’s degree. The American jobs plan is a blue collar blueprint to build
America. That’s what it is. China and other countries are closing in fast. We
have to develop and dominate the products and technologies of the future. So
let’s get to work. I wanted to lay out before the Congress my plan, before we
got into the deep discussions. I’d like to meet with those who have ideas that
are different. They think are better. I welcome those ideas, but the rest of
the world is not waiting for us. I just want to be clear, from my perspective,
doing nothing is not an option. The war in Afghanistan, as we remember the
debates here, were never meant to be multigenerational undertakings of nation
building. We went to Afghanistan to get terrorists, the terrorists who attacked
us on 9/11 and after 20 years of value, valor and sacrifice, it’s time to bring
those troops home. Congress needs to pass legislation this year to finally
secure protection for Dreamers. [Applause] The young people who’ve only known
America has their home. And permanent protection for immigrants who are here on
temporary protected status, who came from countries beset by man-made and
natural-made violence and disaster. As well as a pathway to citizenship for
foreign workers who put food on our tables. Look, immigrants have done so much
for America during this pandemic and throughout our history. The country
supports immigration reform, we should act, let’s argue over it, let’s debate
it, but let’s act. As I stand here tonight before you in a new and vital hour
of life and democracy of our nation, and I can say with absolute confidence, I
have never been more confident or optimistic about America, not because I’m
president, because of what’s happening with the American people. We’ve stared
into the abyss of insurrection and autocracy, pandemic and pain, and we the
people did not flinch.
By Peter
Baker
Published
April 28, 2021
Updated
April 29, 2021, 2:36 a.m. ET
President
Biden laid out an ambitious agenda on Wednesday night to rewrite the American
social compact by vastly expanding family leave, child care, health care,
preschool and college education for millions of people to be financed with
increased taxes on the wealthiest earners.
Invoking
the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Mr. Biden unveiled a $1.8 trillion social
spending plan to accompany previous proposals to build roads and bridges,
expand other social programs and combat climate change, representing a
fundamental reorientation of the role of government not seen since the days of
Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society and Roosevelt’s New Deal.
“We have to
prove democracy still works, that our government still works and we can deliver
for our people,” Mr. Biden said in his first nationally televised address to a
joint session of Congress.
Taken
together, the collection of initiatives that Mr. Biden has introduced in his
first 100 days in office suggest a breathtaking scope of change sought by a
78-year-old president who spent a lifetime as a more conventional lawmaker.
After presenting himself during last year’s campaign as a “transition
candidate” to follow the volatile tenure of Donald J. Trump, Mr. Biden has
since his inauguration positioned himself as a transformational president.
But the
succession of costly proposals amounts to a risky gamble that a country deeply
polarized along ideological and cultural lines is ready for a more activist
government and the sort of redistribution of wealth long sought by
progressives. Mr. Biden’s Democrats have only the barest of majorities in the
House and Senate to push through the most sweeping of legislation and,
successful or not, he may have framed the terms of the debate for the next
election.
“Our best
future will not come from Washington schemes or socialist dreams,” Senator Tim
Scott, Republican of South Carolina, said in his party’s televised official
response. “It will come from you — the American people.”
For Mr.
Biden, who watched such speeches as a senator or vice president for nearly a
half-century, it was the first time behind the microphone setting the agenda
for what was the functional equivalent of a State of the Union address. “It’s
good to be back,” he said as he greeted lawmakers.
Coming in
the latter days of the coronavirus pandemic and less than four months after a
mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, though, the event was unlike any
other presidential speech as Mr. Biden faced a half-empty chamber.
On the
advice of the Capitol physician, only 200 members of Congress and other
officials were invited instead of the usual 1,600, and all were wearing masks
in assigned seats at least six feet apart. The president, who fist-bumped his
way down the aisle, arrived amid tighter security than usual, with streets
around the building closed and patrolled by swarms of police officers and
National Guard troops.
The cabinet
was represented by just two members, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, while Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
stood in for the entire Supreme Court and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for the rest of the military hierarchy.
Not allowed
to bring anyone to the first lady’s box, Jill Biden hosted five guests online
beforehand, including a transgender teenager, a gun control activist and an
immigrant brought to the country illegally as a child.
But in a
notable first, Mr. Biden became the first president to deliver an address to
Congress with two women sitting behind him representing the next in the line of
succession to his office, Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker Nancy
Pelosi. After addressing Ms. Harris as “Madam Vice President,” Mr. Biden said
to applause, “No president has ever said those words, and it’s about time.”
The smaller
audience produced a more intimate feeling in the chamber, and unlike previous
presidents, who had to project their voices, Mr. Biden at times lowered his to
a whisper, as he often does during speeches. He departed from his prepared text
and ad-libbed more than most presidents do, and he lingered around the chamber
afterward to chat with lawmakers.
One thing
that did not change were the party-line reactions, as members of the
president’s party jumped to their feet to cheer his ideas, while the opposition
remained sitting on their hands — with a few notable exceptions.
Mr. Biden
struck an optimistic note with the fading of the pandemic that has killed more
than 573,000 people in this country, hailing the progress in vaccinating most
American adults and the easing of public health restrictions that have so
warped everyday life for more than a year.
“Now, after
just 100 days, I can report to the nation: America is on the move again,” the
president said. “Turning peril into possibility. Crisis into opportunity.
Setbacks into strength. We all know life can knock us down. But in America, we
never, ever, ever stay down.”
The
gathering nonetheless came at a moment of racial turmoil after last week’s
conviction of a former Minneapolis police officer in the murder of George Floyd
and after a spate of subsequent shootings involving law enforcement agents
around the country. And it came at a time of multiple mass shootings that have
once again put gun laws into question.
Mr. Biden
called for legislation to improve policing across the United States and to
restrict access to high-powered firearms. He expressed hope that negotiations
to rein in police abuses may reach bipartisan agreement and called on lawmakers
to come to a deal by next month, one year after Mr. Floyd’s death, but no
consensus across the aisle appears likely for meaningful gun legislation.
“The vast
majority of those wearing the badge serve our communities honorably,” Mr. Biden
said, drawing bipartisan applause. But he added, “We have to come together to
rebuild trust between law enforcement and the people they serve, to root out
systemic racism in our criminal justice system and enact police reform in
George Floyd’s name.”
Mr. Biden
also came to the defense of transgender people who have been targeted by some
Republicans. “For all transgender Americans watching at home, especially young
people who are so brave, I want you to know that your president has your back,”
he said.
The
president, who has struggled to respond to a surge of migrants at the
southwestern border since taking office, highlighted his proposed overhaul of
the immigration system, discussed his goals to stem climate change and urged
legislation to expand voting rights.
While Mr.
Biden promoted his decision to pull all troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11
after nearly 20 years of war there, he said little new about how he would
address challenges from increasingly antagonistic adversaries like China,
Russia, Iran and North Korea other than repeating his intent to take a tough
line when necessary while seeking cooperation where possible.
But as
striking as anything else in the speech was Mr. Biden’s vision of a profound
pivot in America’s eternal debate about the role of government in society. Four
decades after President Ronald Reagan declared that government was the problem,
not the solution, Mr. Biden aimed to turn that thesis on its head, seeking to
empower the federal state as a catalyst to remake the country and revamp the
balance between the richest and the rest.
The
“American Families Plan,” as he called his latest, $1.8 trillion proposal,
would follow the “American Rescue Plan,” a $1.9 trillion package of spending on
pandemic relief and economic stimulus that he has already signed into law, and
the “American Jobs Plan,” a $2.3 trillion program for infrastructure, home
health care and other priorities that remains pending.
The
families plan includes $1 trillion in new spending and $800 billion in tax
credits. It would finance universal prekindergarten for all 3- and 4-year-olds,
a federal paid family and medical leave program, efforts to make child care
more affordable, free community college for all, aid for students at colleges
that historically serve nonwhite communities and expanded subsidies under the
Affordable Care Act.
The plan
would also extend key tax breaks included as temporary measures in the
coronavirus relief package that benefit lower- and middle-income workers and
families, including the child tax credit, the earned-income tax credit, and the
child and dependent care tax credit.
To pay for
that, the president proposed increasing the marginal income tax rate for the
top 1 percent of American income earners, to 39.6 percent from 37 percent. He
would increase capital gains and dividend tax rates for those earning more than
$1 million a year. And he would eliminate a provision in the tax code that
reduces capital gains on some inherited assets, like vacation homes, that
largely benefits the wealthy.
Republicans
did not wait for the speech to be delivered to focus on the sticker shock of
Mr. Biden’s various plans, eager to unify in their opposition to a Democratic
president’s liberal blueprint rather than continue to engage in their own
fractious civil war over the role of Mr. Trump in their party.
“Behind
President Biden’s familiar face, it’s like the most radical Washington
Democrats have been handed the keys, and they’re trying to speed as far left as
they can possibly go before American voters ask for their car back,” Senator
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said beforehand.
Senator
Mitt Romney of Utah, one of the more moderate Republicans that Mr. Biden needs
if he has any hope of forging bipartisan support, used another metaphor. “Maybe
if he were younger, I’d say his dad needs to take away the credit card,” Mr.
Romney told reporters.
Nor did
Republicans give the president credit for progress in curbing the pandemic,
pointing out that the coronavirus vaccines were developed under Mr. Trump and
that the economy was already on the rebound by the time Mr. Biden took office.
“This administration inherited a tide that had already turned,” Mr. Scott said.
“The coronavirus is on the run.”
But as
aggressive as Mr. Biden’s programs were, he faced pressure from the left to go
further. Some liberals, for instance, were disappointed that he did not do more
to expand health care and pulled out of the families plan a proposal to
authorize Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices amid industry
opposition. In the speech, he promised to pursue such a policy and called for
separate legislation to be passed by the end of the year.
In making
his pitch for a more expansive government, Mr. Biden tied his plans to the Jan.
6 attack on the Capitol, suggesting that the American system itself was being
tested.
“Can our
democracy deliver on its promise that all of us, created equal in the image of
God, have a chance to lead lives of dignity, respect and possibility?” he
asked. “Can our democracy deliver on the most pressing needs of our people? Can
our democracy overcome the lies, anger, hate and fears that have pulled us
apart?”
The world’s
autocrats, he said, were betting that it could not. “They look at the images of
the mob that assaulted the Capitol as proof that the sun is setting on American
democracy,” Mr. Biden said. “But they’re wrong. You know it. I know it. But we
have to prove them wrong.”
Peter Baker
is the chief White House correspondent and has covered the last five presidents
for The Times and The Washington Post. He also is the author of six books, most
recently "The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker
III." @peterbakernyt •
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