President Biden likely would be greeted by the sounds of boos if he issues calls for bipartisanship and unity during his first address to a joint session of Congress, according to some Republicans.
Plans are being laid regarding how Biden, who will serve his 50th day in office on Thursday, will deliver his address since public health officials are advising against gathering in large crowds due to the coronavirus pandemic. But if lawmakers and their guests follow tradition and cram into the House chamber, one Republican is warning any mention of bipartisanship may be poorly received by his own party.
“If he goes before a joint session of Congress and he talks about bipartisanship, I’m afraid,” Bill Hoagland, a Bipartisan Policy Center senior vice president and a longtime Republican Senate staffer, told the Washington Examiner. “This scares me because I don’t want to see this happen to the president: He might actually get booed from the Republicans.”
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Bipartisanship and unity were central themes of Biden’s presidential campaign inaugural address. But as he reaches the halfway point of the traditional first 100 days “honeymoon” period, those ideas may not resonate with Republicans after the White House and congressional Democrats pushed a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 spending package through the House and Senate with no Republican votes.
It’s an unfamiliar predicament for Biden.
The president’s address will mark the first time both chambers have convened together since the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. And even Republicans concede they believe he would have preferred a bipartisan approach to the spending package. The White House, though, has blamed the pandemic national emergency for their decision not to pursue a compromise deal. The White House also argues the package is supported by a majority of the public, citing polling.
Hoagland suggested a gesture such as giving “a little” credit to former President Donald Trump, his administration, and the last Congress for its private-sector collaboration on three effective and safe coronavirus vaccines. He recommended, too, that Biden propose measures that reel in some of the federal government’s debt and put forward criminal justice reform as a possible area of bipartisan agreement.
“He’s got to walk a tightrope with a very aggressive and active progressive wing of his party that wants do an awful lot,” Hoagland said. “Somehow, he’s got to pull in that portion of his party that’s saying all these things that we can do without recognizing there are limits to how much government can do.”
The address will come at a pivotal moment in Biden’s presidency. After a flurry of preplanned executive orders and intense focus on the spending package, Biden has to lay out his policy agenda beyond his first 100 days, independent of the issues that will inevitably distract him during his term.
The White House has been coy concerning the address, which is called “the State of the Union” when it’s not made in a president’s first year in office. Aides even declined to provide the Washington Examiner with details of the speech’s drafting process. White House chief of staff Ron Klain, however, revealed in an interview this week that Biden was “going to take a couple of weeks to really explain” the spending package to the public before he delivered the remarks.
Jeff Shesol of West Wing Writers, whose former colleague Jeff Nussbaum joined the White House this week as a senior presidential speechwriter, said Biden’s team was “wise” to wait until after the spending package had been passed and signed.
“I think it is really important for him to describe what is in the relief bill, why it was so important, what has been accomplished, and the work that it’s going to do going forward,” he said, adding that “it’s not just about credit,” but “it’s about credibility.”
“It’s political malpractice to allow others to characterize it,” he went on, predicting Biden would then pivot to make the case for his other top priorities and build momentum around them.
With the spending package billed as the “American Rescue Plan,” Biden signaled during the transition that the next stage of his COVID-19 response would be a recovery effort.
“In my first appearance before a joint session of Congress, I will lay out the second step, my ‘Build Back Better Recovery Plan,'” he said before his inauguration.
During an address in January, Biden previewed how he hoped that package would “make historic investments in infrastructure and manufacturing, innovation, research and development, and clean energy.”
“Investments in the care-giving economy and in skills and training needed by our workers to compete and win the global economy of the future,” he said at the time.
But passing any new proposal will be harder for Democrats than passing the first package, unless they depend on reconciliation again. If they don’t, Democrats will face the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold, and they only control the chamber thanks to Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking role. And the filibuster will become almost insurmountable for more controversial subject matters, including immigration or election reform.
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Shesol, who considers Biden an “underrated” orator, criticized Republican complaints that they weren’t consulted on the initial package. They low-balled the president with their $618 billion counteroffer, he said.
“I’ll say this as a Democrat, but also as somebody who has a pair of eyes and a pair of ears: I think you would be wrong to take the sudden Republican interest in negotiation at face value,” he continued. “They’re more interested in the talking point than they are in actually sitting down and doing the work on a piece of legislation that will solve a problem.”
