Joe Biden accepted Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) invitation to deliver a “vision for addressing the challenges and opportunities of this historic moment,” talking to the joint session of Congress at 9 p.m. Eastern, April 28. He spoke for over an hour without saying much of anything new. The progressive policy prattle and false facts were precisely what was expected – the same things he has said before.
Biden kicked off his speech with a nod to identity politics, emphasizing his thanks to both Madam Speaker and Madam Vice President – then boasting that he’s the first president to ever be able to say that standing at that podium. For too long, no woman had ever attained the office of vice president, he explained. This ice breaker foreshadowed the theme of the entire speech: crisis and opportunity, all wrapped around progressive ideology like identity politics.
The coronavirus outbreak was a crisis – the worst pandemic in a century, he said – but now folks can get vaccinated. The Biden administration aimed for 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days, and – just one day shy of that mark – Biden claims 220 million, all of which he takes credit for. There was no mention of Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s push to get vaccines developed and then distributed.
Build Back Better?
On the topic of distribution, Biden said he kept the promise to get those $1,400 checks to the people. He boasted that he created more jobs in the first 100 days than any other president – some rather large shoes to fill. He also claims the fastest rate of economic recovery in four decades. That these factors increased at a rate faster than in most years isn’t shocking: The nation was already suffering a sharp decline in both thanks to the pandemic and the civil unrest that occurred throughout 2020.
Even though the economy and employment are on the rise, Biden says more must be done to "build back better." He wants Congress to pass the American Jobs Act so he can sign it into law. According to the president, the proposal will create millions of jobs – the vast majority of which don’t require a college education – and trillions of dollars over eight years, though he had previously said seven. Much like the spike in employment created by his ideological predecessor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Biden’s jobs would be tax-funded; that means the American people will have the pick up the tab.
Biden later declared that a consensus of economists left, right, and center agrees: the big-spending infrastructure bills are just what the country needs. Liberty Nation’s Andrew Moran explained:
“President Biden is perhaps correct about the left because progressives are saying he is exceeding all expectations. But the right and even center understand all this exorbitant spending will exacerbate America’s fiscal reckoning.
Consider this: He proposes to spend a couple of trillion dollars – in addition to the trillions already on the books – over seven years. But Biden plans to repay it in 15. Americans should not be surprised by this fiscal irresponsibility; he never campaigned on being fiscally responsible.”
But who’s going to pay for all this? Not the middle class; they’ve paid enough as it is – and what middle-class folk could disagree with that? Instead, only those making more than $400,000 a year would see a tax increase. Biden promised this would only affect three-tenths of 1% of the population.
Sadly, he doesn’t account for the fact that when the government puts the squeeze on businesses, it’s the employees and consumers who end up covering the difference. As profits go down, the price of goods and services go up while some employees will see their hours reduced or find themselves unemployed entirely. The same goes for the $15 an hour federal minimum wage Biden wants so badly. He argues that no person working 40 hours a week should live below the poverty line – but it’s progressive policies that put people there as they stuff more dollars in their pockets with less actual buying power.
Biden’s Family Plan
The president also took the opportunity to push his other major spending bill, the American Families Plan. According to Biden, this will accomplish four things.
Provide access to good education by adding two years of preschool and two years of community college to the existing k-12 system.
Provide quality affordable childcare, for which low- and middle-income families would pay no more than 7% of their income.
Require all companies to offer 12 weeks of paid family leave.
Extend the child tax credit through at least 2025.
Biden bragged about the public school system, which “made us the best-educated nation in the world.” According to the results of the most recent Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results, the U.S. doesn’t even rank in the top ten for reading, math, or science.
Perhaps the president is right to worry that Americans won’t stay competitive with the rest of the world. However, if 13 years of state-run education is to blame, perhaps adding another four years of government control isn’t the best solution.
The Anti-Gun Push
No Joe Biden speech would be complete without referencing the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994, claiming it worked and saying that a new, more restrictive version that never expires is the best way to solve our “gun violence epidemic.” His math simply doesn’t add up – as has been shown on Liberty Nation before. But common sense should have made that obvious. As LN Legal Affairs Editor Scott D. Cosenza, Esq. often says, folks who are okay with committing murder really don’t care about other, less serious crimes.
According to Biden, “responsible gun owners and hunters” say that there’s no reason for anyone to be able to fire off 100 rounds. While that statement certainly seems suspect, let’s give the man the benefit of the doubt and assume someone did tell him this. It’s the next two statements he made that boggle the mind. From the very beginning, there were certain guns that the average American wasn’t allowed to own. That’s simply false. There were no federal restrictions on the types of weapons an individual could own until the National Firearms Act. Indeed, most of the cannons and ships used in the American Revolution were privately owned, as were many of the guns in the Civil War. Even as late as World War I, American soldiers were sent home with their service weapons.
The next would be a bit embarrassing for a Democrat these days if he stopped long enough to really think about it. Certain people weren’t allowed to own guns back in the early days of the Republic. That’s true. While there was no law banning those with criminal pasts from owning firearms, black and Native Americans absolutely were prohibited persons back in those days.
We the People
Biden wrapped up his speech by quoting FDR, saying that everyone should do their part. But he also made an appeal to the people that turned out quite humorous. He harped on “we the people,” saying that we the people are the government. You and I. Not some force in a distant capital, not some powerful force we have no control over. And he said these words as if he weren’t a career politician – someone who has literally never done anything outside of politics – as if he weren’t the president himself, standing in a distant capital speaking to Congress, a powerful force many people feel they have no control over. It is this, perhaps more than anything else, that demonstrates the man’s complete disconnect from reality … but what an appropriately Joe Biden way to end his address!
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Read more from James Fite.
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