While President Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night is expected to sound like a re-election campaign speech, a look at his first speech shows that he failed to deliver on several important promises, including border security and the reduction of prices.
During his State of the Union address on March 1, Biden argued that “if we want to advance liberty and justice, we must secure our border and fix the immigration system.”
But illegal immigration reached another all-time high last year, with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reporting 2,214,652 total migrant encounters in fiscal year 2022, a 41% increase over the previous year.
“The border is more porous than ever in the history of the United States,” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts told Fox News Digital in an interview Monday, adding that Biden has “taken literally zero” steps to secure border.
“Which means that when you are the head of a cartel that basically runs the northern provinces of Mexico, when you hear that the president of the United States is not saying anything, and you know on the basis that he has not done anything, there has been no construction. of a border wall, there has actually been a decrease in the number of Border Patrol agents, there has been a relative decrease in funding for US Customs and Border Patrol, all of that points to having a greater incentive to do the human trafficking they’re doing,” he said.
United States President Joe Biden delivers a State of the Union address at the United States Capitol in Washington, DC, USA, on Tuesday, March 1, 2022. (Jim LoScalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
BIDEN ONLY MENTIONED CHINA 3 TIMES IN THE 2022 STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS
During his March 1 speech, after the annual inflation rate reached 7.9% and the average cost of a gallon of unleaded gasoline hit $3.61, Biden said his “top priority is to control prices.” “.
“Too many families are struggling to keep up with their bills,” biden said. “Inflation is robbing them of gains they thought they might otherwise feel.”
Just months after Biden’s speech, the inflation rate peaked at 9.1% and the average gallon of gasoline shot up to $5.02. Gas is now only 14 cents cheaper than it was during the speech at $3.47 and inflation is still 6.5%.
Other household staples, like milk and bread, have also skyrocketed since Biden’s speech: $4.02 for a gallon of whole milk then to $4.43 now, according to the Department of Agriculture. the United States (USDA).
Biden and the Democrats, without any Republican endorsement, passed the so-called Reduce Inflation Act in August, which economists, commentators and politicians on both sides of the political aisle acknowledged was more of a climate change and health care bill than practically I would do nothing. to tame inflation. It was a watered-down version of Biden’s Build Back Better plan that promised he would only raise taxes on people making more than $400,000 a year.
“And under my plan, no one, let me say it again, no one who makes less than $400,000 a year will pay an extra penny in new taxes. Not a single penny,” Biden said during his latest State of the Union address.
President Joe Biden delivers his first State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, March 1, 2022, in Washington. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool via AP) (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool via AP)
“That’s another lie,” Roberts told Fox News Digital. “And the reason is that every American has had an effective tax increase since day one of the Biden administration because of his excessive spending.”
While the Inflation Reduction Act did not include a direct tax on workers making less than $400,000, economists said some provisions of the bill could impose indirect costs on low- and middle-income Americans. The 15% minimum corporate tax rate in the bill, for example, could result in companies reducing investment returns or lowering workers’ wages.
The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) released a report in July saying Americans who earn less than $200,000 per year will pay nearly $17 billion in additional taxes combined in 2023.
When contacted by Fox News Digital, the White House provided a fact sheet released Monday that said Biden’s “economic plan is working” but “there is more work to do.”
“[A]“Annual inflation has fallen for six months in a row, driven in large part by a decrease of about $1.50 in gasoline prices compared to last summer,” the fact sheet says. “During the second half of 2022, three-month core inflation fell from nearly 8% at an annualized rate to 3% at an annualized rate, while unemployment held at or near 50-year lows.”
FOX NEWS POLL: THE STATE OF THE UNION IS DYSFUNCTION, DISSATISFACTION AND DISAPPROVAL
Biden also promised to reduce the budget deficit by $1 trillion by the end of 2022 during his last speech.
“By the end of this year, the deficit will be reduced to less than half of what it was before I took office, the only president to cut the deficit by more than $1 trillion in a single year,” he said.
Biden faced pushback from fact checkers after taking a victory lap in October for reducing the deficit to $1.38 trillion during fiscal year 2022, down from $2.78 trillion a year earlier. But before Biden and the Democrats passed his $1.9 trillion American Bailout Plan in March 2021, without a single Republican vote, the Congressional Budget Office had projected the budget deficit to fall to $1.1 trillion in the fiscal year 2022.
Meanwhile, the national debt has risen $1.3 trillion since Biden’s last speech and the government reported a deficit of $421 billion for the first three months of fiscal year 2023, an increase of 12% over the same period. period last year.
US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., right, and US Vice President Kamala Harris speak as US President Joe Biden at center, speaks during a State of the Union address at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday. , March 1, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
During his 2022 speech, Biden also said he would “beat the opioid epidemic” by stopping “the flow of illicit drugs by working with state and local law enforcement to go after dealers.”
But illegal immigration and opioid deaths continued to skyrocket.
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid up to 50 times stronger than heroin, has been driving the latest phase of the opioid epidemic. More than 14,000 pounds of fentanyl were seized at the border in fiscal year 2022, up 25% from the previous year, and more than 9,000 pounds of fentanyl have already been seized during this fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, according to CBP. .
AS BIDEN THROWS THE AMERICAN ECONOMY, AMERICANS STRUGGLE TO MAKE CAR PAYMENTS
The White House on Monday cited CBP seizure statistics as evidence that Biden is making good on his promise to combat the opioid crisis, arguing that the administration has so far denied $3 billion to drug producers and traffickers.
The White House also provided background on various administration initiatives to address the crisis, including $275 million which was announced in April to reduce violence associated with drug trafficking in High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA).
Opioid addiction is a top voter concern, with 76% extremely or very concerned. The only issues evaluated that they find most worrisome are inflation (86%), higher crime rates (80%) and political divisions (78%), according to a new Fox News poll.
“I thought, naively I guess, that when the president talked about ending the opioid epidemic, we would have an opportunity as a country to come together around something that knows no partisan lines,” Roberts told Fox News Digital. “And instead, the president hasn’t even seized that political opportunity.”
“For me, of all the failures of the Biden administration, and unfortunately there are many, being someone who looks at this through the eyes of humanity, I think that’s the biggest one,” he said. “And I think his legacy will really be tarnished as a result.”
BIDEN BATTERED BY CRISIS SINCE THE LAST STATE OF THE UNION
The president has not officially announced his re-election bid, but has repeatedly said that he hopes to throw his hat in the ring sometime this year.
So far, former President Donald Trump is the only candidate to have officially announced his 2024 presidential run.
United States President Joe Biden speaks during a rally hosted by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) at Richard Montgomery High School on August 25, 2022 in Rockville, Maryland. Biden rallied supporters of the Democratic candidates running in Maryland and encouraged Democratic voters across the country to turn out in the November midterm elections. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
It is the second State of the Union address of the Biden presidency, but unlike his last address, this year’s will be given in front of a divided Congress.
Meanwhile, a staggering 4 in 10 Americans say they’ve gotten worse off financially since Biden took office, according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, the highest figure in the poll’s 37-year history.
“A year ago, Joe Biden told us he had a plan to tackle inflation, secure the border and help workers, leaving no one behind,” Republican strategist Zack Roday told Fox News Digital. “But today, inflation is at its highest in 40 years, the border is a mess, and seven in 10 Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction. I look forward to an endless series of ‘he said what now’ moments.” of a president known for overreacting.”
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