It is kind of odd seeing a socially distanced joint session speech. The lack of applause and shout outs to the First Lady Box guests should cut down on the time considerably.
Joe Biden has arrived at the Capitol and is about to begin his joint address. Not every member of Congress is in attendance due to social distancing guidelines.
A new tidbit from Politico: Biden’s chief speechwriter, Vinay Reddy, previously turned down the now-president during the 2020 Democratic primary.
The reason? Reddy was then working for Adam Silver, commissioner of the National Basketball Association — which was then embroiled in a standoff with the Chinese Communist Party over pro-Hong Kong tweets made my Daryl Morey, then-general manager of the Houston Rockets.
One Democrat with an inordinate amount of power in Washington is Senator Joe Manchin. And the West Virginia moderate sounded bearish on Biden’s proposed spending on Wednesday.
“It’s a lot of money, a lot of money,” Manchin told reporters. “That makes you very uncomfortable.”
“We’re at $28.2 trillion now, debt, so you have to be very careful. There’s a balance to be had here.”
“One hundred days since I took the oath of office—lifted my hand off our family Bible—and inherited a nation in crisis,” Biden will say, according to prepared remarks. “The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression” (Philip Klein fact-checks that claim here).
The president will then call the January 6 capitol riot “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
“Now—after just 100 days—I can report to the nation: America is on the move again.”
Biden’s prepared remarks say his new legislation “will add millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in economic growth for years to come,” calling the bill “a blue-collar blueprint to build America.”
Biden’s address tonight will unveil his new $1.8 trillion bill focused on health care, child care, and education.
Titled the "American Families Plan," the proposal allocates $400 billion to extend the existing child tax credit, $225 billion in childcare subsidies, $225 billion for a national paid family leave program, $200 billion for universal preschool, and more. The administration says it will be financed by $1.5 trillion over the next ten years in tax increases — principally by hiking the top marginal tax rate to 39.6 percent for Americans with incomes above $400,000; taxing capital gains at the highest rate and at death, and the elimination of the “step up in basis” loophole.