State of the Union

The State of the Union address is an annual message delivered by the President of the United States. It is a joint session of the US Congress near the beginning of each calendar year on the current condition of the nation. The 2022 State of the Union was given by the 46 president of the United States of America, Joe Biden, on March 1, 2022 at 9 PM Eastern time. It was held in the chamber of the US House of Representatives to the 117 US Congress.

I wouldn’t claim that I am a republican or democrat. Since I turned 18 I have not voted in a presidential election. But my parents are republican so majority of the time you’re going to learn and agree with your parents but just from the knowledge. Out of the knowledge I have gained about politics the mass majority of my beliefs are republican beliefs. The most recent race between Trump and Biden was a shocking one. Trump and Clinton’s race was interesting because Hillary won but Trump won the electoral college. In 2020, Biden clinched Pennsylvania. Which locked him in with the electoral college which put his votes past 270. 

As a communications major, I have to also evaluate the speech aspect of this state of the union. The kind of speech that Joe Biden delivered was an explanatory speech. The definition of an explanatory speech is a certain type of speech that is informative and explains the topics. The structure of the speech was not very good at all. There was not an introduction nor was there a conclusion. He also stumbles over his words often.

The first thing Joe Biden talked about was the war between Russia and Ukraine. Biden was largely focused on the war going on over there. It looked into the public and economic health woes besetting the U.S. Something else he mentioned was that we (U.S.) are locked in with NATO. NATO is also known as North Atlantic Treaty Organization. It was created in 1949 by the United States, Canada and several other Western nations in Europe. The purpose was actually to provide protection from Russia. Biden also said that Putin denied diplomacy. I personally think that he would have accepted it from Donald Trump because Trump had everybody under his foot. He raised the trade tariffs on China. My mom is a longshoreman. Longshoremen work on the dock to unload cargo off of large trade boats coming in from all over the world. When he did that, work was very slow for her for about 3 months.

The second thing that Biden talked about was Covid-19. The order of these topics did not surprise me. He basically said the country has moved beyond the pandemic even though it is still in the rear view mirror. He also mentioned that most of America has the availability to be mask less. Mentioning that most Americans are vaccinated and vaccines are still available. Something he said while he was on the topic of Covid-19 caught my attention. He said,” Unlike the 2 trillion dollar tax cut passed in the previous administration that benefited the top 1 percent of Americans, the American Rescue Plan helped working people and left no one behind.” Right after he said the American rescue plan, he started to get booed. But once he finished his sentence he got really loud cheers. The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 is a stimulus bill worth 1.9 billion. It basically provided investing, emergency grants, and lending to small businesses to maintain. It also boosted the child tax credit 2 thousand to 3 thousand per child for ages over 6 and 3600 for children under the age of 6. I am not sure why people booed but I like this act.