For an alternate viewpoint, “Point: Biden Can Make Our Post-America America Great Again.”
The following excerpts are from President Biden’s address as prepared for delivery. As always, he reserves the right to change them during delivery as he sees fit. Any use of these excerpts should be checked for accuracy against the president’s actual address.
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Introduction:
I know I’m supposed to be here because it’s on my calendar. But I can’t for the life of me remember why I’m here. PAUSE. That’s a joke, folks. J-O-K-E.
But seriously, I remember the first time I sat in this chamber. It was on February 2nd, 1973, for President Nixon’s State of the Union address. I was new to Congress. It was one month after my first inauguration as a United States senator from Delaware. And while I don’t remember every word of President Nixon’s address, I distinctly recall how much he devoted to protecting our environment and natural resources. This was the president, after all, who had created the Environmental Protection Agency during his second year in office. This was the president who had pushed for and then signed two historic laws — the Clean Water Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972. This was the president — a Republican, mind you — who had done more to preserve our beautiful earth than any previous president since Teddy Roosevelt, who, for those of you who were not alive as I was then — that’s another joke — was also a Republican.
As my fellow senators and representatives listened to President Nixon, none of us had ever heard of climate change. The phrase “global warming” had no meaning to us. None of us had any inkling that a half-century later, we would be fighting to save this wonderful planet we call home and to prevent our species — and all the other ones with which we share the Earth — from extinction.
And there was something else we didn’t know. Not one of us, including President Nixon, could have imagined that in just 18 short months, he would resign from office, both a victim and an engineer of a scandal called Watergate.
My point, friends, is that none of us sitting here tonight can know what the future might bring. All we can do is try our best to make it the best future possible. And we should also pray for God’s help, as I have done every day since Americans gave me the honor of serving them as president.
Ukraine/Border:
Since the murderous dictator Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine just over two years ago, I have met with President Volodymyr Zelensky five times, including a year ago in his beautiful capital, Kyiv. Which I am happy to report remains under Ukrainian control despite early predictions that it would quickly fall to the Kremlin’s killers.
President Zelensky is a brave man leading a courageous nation during an existential threat to its very existence. As Americans with our own courageous history, we must be no less brave and resolute. If any of you believe that Putin will stop at Ukraine’s borders — if you think that former Soviet states Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, now all members of NATO, are safe — I have a condo to sell you in Moscow.
Putin’s brazen war in Ukraine is a direct threat to our national security. And the brave Ukrainian soldiers are defending not only their homeland but also a crucial part of Europe. They are fighting so that we don’t have to send American troops to this continent that has endured so much bloodshed, some of it spilled by our boys who helped stop an earlier dictator.
A few months ago, with the help of three senators sitting here tonight – Senators James Lankford, Kyrsten Sinema and Chris Murphy — by the way, a Republican, an independent and a Democrat — the Senate negotiated a major bill that combined additional desperately needed aid to Ukraine with significant changes to strengthen our southern border. I will tell you tonight that I was not a big fan of this bill. For me, some of the border provisions went too far. But, friends, I will remind you of the lesson I’ve learned while serving as senator, vice president and president: Politics is the art of the possible. It demands — always — compromise. When President Obama and I worked to pass the landmark Affordable Care Act — now known widely as Obamacare — neither he nor I were thrilled with it. It accomplished less than we had sought. And yet, 14 years later, it is overwhelmingly popular with our fellow Americans. Which is why, if you’ll permit me to be just a little bit snarky, my Republican friends here in Congress have given up trying to overturn it after dozens of failed attempts.
I urge House Republicans who have so far blocked the Ukraine-border bill to accept their win. The measure contains many of the provisions they demanded for months. Should they fail to approve the security assistance that Ukraine so desperately needs, I can confidently predict the future: History will judge them harshly.
2024 Election:
It is a political truism that a president should not talk about elections in this annual address to Congress. But, friends, we live in unusual times. Times so unusual that come November, a sitting president will, in all likelihood, run against a former president. That has happened only once in our history — when Grover Cleveland in 1892 reclaimed the White House after losing it four years earlier. But what has never happened is a former president reclaiming the White House after being indicted, much less after facing four separate criminal indictments.
Donald Trump chose not to debate his Republican rivals during their party’s primary season, which likely ended on Super Tuesday two days ago. I hope he will have the courage — and the respect for American voters — to debate me during the general election campaign that now begins. I look forward to it. As he showed as president and unfortunately continues to show even more glaringly, Trump has little knowledge of how government works and even less respect. By comparison, I have enormous respect for our unique democratic system. And, yes, I understand how it works and, still more important, how it must work to help the American people.
Our comparative levels of expertise and respect will be on display on the debate stage later this year. And I am confident of the outcome. That is if President Trump is man enough to join me on that stage.
