“We’re Going to Be OK”: Biden’s State of the Union

President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union address was remarkable in several respects, beginning with the fact that about 200 legislators gathered in person in the House chamber, maskless, to hear it. “Last year COVID-19 kept us apart. This year we are finally together again,” he said.

Red, White, (Yellow) and Blue

Any celebration of this fact was tempered by the first item on his agenda, an extended recounting of recent events in Ukraine. Outrage over Russia’s unprovoked attack on a sovereign democracy brought an uncharacteristic tone of bipartisan unity to this portion of the address, which was punctuated by numerous standing ovations.

Biden praised the fearlessness and courage of the Ukrainian president and people. “Let each of us here tonight in this Chamber send an unmistakable signal to Ukraine and to the world,” he said. With many in the chamber holding blue and yellow Ukrainian flags, Biden continued, “We the United States of America stand with the Ukrainian people.”

The support, he said, came in the form of economic sanctions that are “inflicting pain” on Russia to which he added the decision that the U.S. will join its allies in closing off American airspace to Russian flights. America will also provide $1 billion in economic assistance to Ukraine, he said, and will release 30 million barrels of oil from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help keep gas prices low.

“I know the news about what’s happening can seem alarming,” the president said. “But I want you to know that we are going to be OK. We’re Going to Be OK,” he repeated.

Breathing Room

Biden said the American Rescue Plan (ARP) delivered immediate economic relief to tens of millions of Americans, “And as my Dad used to say, it gave people a little breathing room.”

He contrasted the ARP to the previous administration’s tax cut “that benefited the top 1 percent of Americans,” a remark that prompted booing from Republicans in the audience.

The president highlighted the creation of 6.5 million new jobs and an economic growth rate of 5.7 percent, “the strongest in 40 years.” Growth is better than contraction, but recovery from a historic downturn is not the same as outright expansion.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total non-farm employment is still 2.9 million workers below where it was in February 2020, the month before pandemic lockdowns began.

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The current workforce participation rate in the key demographic of 25- to 54-year-olds is a considerable improvement over pandemic lows, but not above the March 2020 rate.

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Infrastructure Weeks Become the Infrastructure Decade

Biden called the bipartisan infrastructure bill the most sweeping investment to rebuild America in history. “We’re done talking about infrastructure weeks,” said Biden. “We’re going to have an infrastructure decade.”

Millions of good jobs will come from projects to modernize roads, airports, ports and roadways and waterways, he said, highlighting efforts to build 500,000 EV charging stations, provide high-speed Internet to every American and repair more than 65,000 miles of road and 1,500 bridges.

As this work moves forward, fueled by taxpayer dollars, the products required should be made in America, the president said, “from the deck of an aircraft carrier to the steel on highway guardrails.” The audience responded to the American jobs and products pledge with chants of “USA, USA, USA.”

He called for Congress to pass legislation to invest in emerging technologies and manufacturing to level the playing field with China and other competitors, citing a $20 billion investment that Intel is willing to make to build a semiconductor “mega site” in Ohio that would comprise eight factories and 10,000 jobs.

“All they’re waiting for is for you to pass this bill,” Biden said. “Send it to my desk. I’ll sign it.”

Intel’s investment in Ohio is a clear example that America’s comeback starts in the Midwest. Cleveland is ready to lead the way. #SOTU

— Justin M. Bibb (@JustinMBibb) March 2, 2022

Two such bills are currently before Congress: the United States Innovation and Competition Act would invest $250 billion in semiconductor production, A.I. development, space exploration, and education. It passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support (68-32). The America Competes Act would appropriate $52 billion for some of the same purposes. It made it out of the House by a small margin and is strongly opposed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Lower Costs, Not Wages

Historic inflation rates reflect pandemic paradoxes. Consumers have money and they’re ready to leave home and spend it, but COVID-19 disruptions have cut supplies of goods. Workers inspired to leave bad jobs for better ones are earning more, but this also means added costs that employers must pass on to customers.

Biden described his plan to fight inflation in a call to “lower your costs, not your wages.”

This can be achieved, he said, through a plan he called “Building a Better America.” A variation of Build Back Better, at least rhetorically, it includes cutting the cost of prescription drugs, cutting energy cost for families, providing investments and tax credits for energy efficiency, doubling clean energy production and lowering the price of EVs.

The plan would also cut the cost of child care in half, provide home and long-term care, pre-K services and affordable housing, he said. There were no details about how all this would be accomplished except to insist that “nobody earning less than $400,000 a year will pay any new taxes.”

The Elephant in the Room

While acknowledging COVID-19 as a “God-awful disease,” the president made the case that it’s now possible to move forward safely. Consistent with revised Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance released last Friday, the president said most Americans in most of the country can now be mask-free.

“COVID-19 need no longer control our lives,” said Biden, naming four “common sense” steps to stay ahead of it — including vaccines and antiviral treatments, ending school and business shutdowns and “vaccinating the world.”

He announced that starting next week, Americans will be able to request more free tests at covidtests.gov and the launch of a “Test to Treat” initiative that will enable them to get COVID-19 tests at a pharmacy and receive antiviral pills at no cost.

He also mentioned detecting and preparing for new variants, with the possibility of new vaccines within 100 days, without details about how this would be accomplished. What the president did not mention was investing in public health infrastructure, or addressing the exodus of public health officials and caregivers.

“The invasion of Ukraine, climate change, and jobs creation are all important but to not explicitly call out the need for public health investments while the pandemic continues shows how quickly our nation has moved on and just how vulnerable that makes us,” said Brian Castrucci, president and CEO of the DeBeamont Foundation. “Our inability to understand this may be the most bipartisan thing in Washington.”

Unity Agenda

As the address turned toward its conclusion, he emphasized support for a long list of reforms long embraced by his party, from gun control, protecting voting rights, health-care access, citizenship for Dreamers and a pathway for those on temporary status to LGBTQ+ rights, strengthening the Violence Against Women Act and protecting the right to abortion.

He also attempted to recast the Democrats’ position on policing. “The answer is to fund the police with resources and training they need to protect our communities,” he said, prompting virtually everyone in the chamber to rise and applaud. Though he broke with a phrase that has been weaponized by Republicans, some of the strategies he outlined to improve public safety reflected progressive priorities.

In closing, the president offered a “Unity Agenda” which seemed to step aside from issues that are currently dividing Americans in favor of things that could possibly gain bipartisan agreement.

These “four big things we can do together” include addressing the opioid epidemic, focusing on mental health, including social media privacy protections for children and ensuring that veterans receive the benefits and health care they deserve, with attention to those exposed to toxic material from burn pits. Data from Google Trends indicates that searches for “burn pit” increased by 2,650 percent during the speech.

Biden’s mental health priority includes placing new limits on social media, including increased privacy regulations. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a nonpartisan research organization that works at the intersection of technology and public policy, says a comprehensive federal data privacy law should top the unity agenda.

“President Biden should urge Congress to create a national privacy framework that establishes basic consumer data rights, preempts state laws, ensures reliable enforcement, streamlines regulation, and minimizes the impact on innovation,” wrote the ITIF in a prepared statement. “Congress has shown a strong desire to tackle this issue, and it is imperative that this issue be addressed at the national level to avoid a fragmented regulatory environment.”

The fourth item on the agenda is to “end cancer as we know it,” he said, cutting the death rate by 50 percent over the next 25 years. He called for Congress to fund the Proposed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research effort included in his FY2022 budget.

“Tonight we have gathered in a sacred space — the citadel of our democracy,” said Biden, subtly evoking the violence of 2021.
“My report is this: the State of the Union is strong — because you are strong,” concluded Biden.


In the Republican response from outside the Iowa state Capitol building, Gov. Kim Reynolds argued “parents matter,” contending control over education and whether and when to wear masks and take vaccines are matters best made by families, not government.

The response echoed familiar conservative themes about spending trillions of taxpayers’ dollars to enrich elites and pay people not to work while inflicting hardships on everyday Americans.

For her part, Reynolds also experienced her own Google Trends moment, with searches for “Gov. Kim Reynolds” spiking 4,300 percent during her rebuttal speech.

Biden also took heat from his left flank. Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan’s 13th Congressional District, who is both a member of the Democratic-led Congressional Progressive Caucus and multiracial Working Families Party, pushed for progressive policy stances from universal health care and child care to stronger climate legislation and easier access to union membership.

Neither Reynolds nor Tlaib said anything that directly contradicted Biden’s proposed unity agenda but it is also clear that their priorities are elsewhere.