President Biden is going to the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday to deliver his State of the Union address as he begins his likely campaign for reelection in 2024.
NPR writes, “Biden has not yet officially announced whether he has decided to make good on what he has said is his intention to run for a second term in office. But he’s expected to do so in the near future. The State of the Union speech, and its large broadcast audience, is an opportunity to show what he plans to run on — and that he has what it takes for a grueling reelect race as the oldest presidential candidate in history.
‘This speech is undoubtedly being seen in the White House as part of the reelect effort,” said Peter Wehner, who wrote speeches for former President George W. Bush. “And what that means is this is a kind of speech that begins to lay out the broad contours of a reelection campaign.'”
Biden is expected to tout the economy as one of his great strengths for reelectoin. Reports say that he intends to “use his second State of the Union address on Tuesday to remind Americans of how their lives have been improved over his first two years in office, as he tries to confront pessimism in the country and navigate the tricky politics of a newly divided Washington.
Rather than laying out major new policy proposals, Biden was expected to devote much of his speech to highlighting his efforts over the past two years to create jobs, fight inflation and improve the nation’s infrastructure. The speech comes as Biden is honing his pitch to voters ahead of his expected announcement in the next few months that he will seek another term in office despite voter frustrations about the direction of the nation.
‘Next week, I’ll be reporting on the state of the Union,’ Biden said Friday after a stronger-than-expected jobs report that saw the unemployment rate drop to the lowest level in more than 53 years. ‘But today, I’m happy to report that the state of the Union and the state of our economy is strong.’”
A message like that might conflict with the reality on the ground however.
More than half of Americans earning six-figure salaries admitted they were living paycheck to paycheck last year as high inflation slammed households, according to an alarming study released this week, according to The New York Post.
As of the end of December, 51% of Americans with $100,000 or more in annual income said they lived paycheck to paycheck, according to the survey conducted by LendingClub and Pymnts.com. The share rose 9% compared to one year earlier, when 42% of six-figure earners made the same admission.
Overall, a whopping 64% of US consumers — the equivalent of 166 million Americans — said they were living on razor-thin budgets each month. That was up from 61%, or about 9.3 million, compared to the previous year’s findings.
‘The effects of inflation are eating into every American’s wallet and as the Fed’s efforts to curb inflation drive up the cost of debt, we are seeing near-record numbers of Americans living paycheck to paycheck,’ said Anuj Nayar, financial health officer at LendingClub.”
While Biden stands there and pats himself on the back for fixing the economy, Americans may take a more jaundiced eye to the celebration. ANN reported earlier that “Americans have been stressed out about money recently and the leading cause continues to be the high rate of inflation and increasing interest rates that have shrunk our pocketbooks over the past two years or so.
CNBC noted, “More than 40% of U.S. adults said that money concerns have a negative impact on their mental health, according to a recent survey from Bankrate. Of those who said money took a toll, most cited feeling stressed, anxious and overwhelmed.
‘When individuals suffer money challenges or they’re working through money issues, there’s tremendous potential for stress,’ said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate.”
While Joe Biden receives alleged kickbacks in the sums of hundreds of thousands from his son Hunter Biden, most Americans believe that he needs to do more to help regular people.
“Seventy-five percent of Americans say strengthening the economy should be the top policy priority for President Joe Biden and Congress to address this year, according to a new Pew Research Center poll, higher than any other priority the survey tested, as reported by NBC.
“At the bottom of the list of 21 different policy priorities is dealing with the coronavirus pandemic, with just 26 percent of respondents saying Biden and Congress should address it this year — a drop from 2021 and 2022, when it was near the top in the poll.”
84 percent of Republicans and 68 percent of Democrats say the economy should be the top issue. That’ll be something to think about when the president spends so much time talking about leftwing pet projects.
[Read More: Walmart Chasing ‘Upscale’ Customers]
