State of the Union 2022 (Updated)

I listened to President Biden’s entire State of the Union message last night from beginning to end. I didn’t listen either to the Republican response or that of the progressive caucus. It was already past my bedtime.

The highest points were at the beginning, largely an encomiumm of the Ukrainians which received approval from both Democrats and Republicans, and the end in which I thought he struck just about the right, positive tone. Between the beginning and the end was mostly the usual wish list we’ve come to expect from SOTU messages. This year’s wish list differed from that of prior years in primarily consisting of things that had already been proposed as legislation that had not passed and appointments that had already been made but not confirmed.

The point that heartened me the most was President Biden’s talk of making things end-to-end in the United States. He dwelt at some length on a facility that Intel was planning to build. Sadly, that has some glaring issues. For one thing we have experience with plants that are announced but never built. For another how are we going to manufacture chips end-to-end without producing more rare earth metals domestically than we do presently? That will require regulatory reforms and/or subsidies. Those are both action items for the federal government. Will either of them happen? Who knows?

It was also heartening that the speech contained relatively few digs at the other party. The only one I identified was an a reference to the tax cuts enacted during the Trump presidency. President Biden never mentioned his predecessor by name which I found refreshingly off-message.

What amused me most about the speech was the frequency with which Sen. Susan Collins’s eyes rolled as the price tags for the items recited during the wish list portion of the speech and the way that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s eyes lit up when the president touched on things that were components of the Green New Deal.

Please add your own reactions to the SOTU message in the comments. I may expand this post with if I encounter anything I think noteworthy.

Update

The editors of the Washington Post definitely saw the fly in President Biden’s ointment from last night:

Now, Mr. Putin’s effort to redraw Europe’s map by force has exploded not only Mr. Biden’s plans for a foreign policy pivot to China but also the entire global balance of power. Dealing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its consequences seems likely to consume a large part of this administration’s attention for the next three years.

In short, events have thrust historic challenges upon Mr. Biden, but also opportunities. Tuesday night, Mr. Biden rightfully claimed that he had helped maintain, and indeed increase, the unity of Western allies in the face of Russian aggression and that his administration made innovative and subtle public use of its intelligence. Strong and swift U.S.-led sanctions, widely supported around the world, have indeed isolated the Putin regime and ensured it pays a heavy price. This has aided unity between the two parties; members of both rose to applaud Ukraine and its ambassador, who was present. The Republicans among them were differentiating themselves from the shameful praise for the dictator voiced by their party’s presumed 2024 presidential front-runner, Mr. Trump.

Yet Mr. Biden celebrated damage to Russia’s economy without fully saluting the courageous Russians who have protested the war. He did not ask Congress for the greater defense spending it may take to restore world order. He did not offer a vision of how NATO could counter the Russian threat in the longer term. Instead, he pivoted to a long list of familiar domestic proposals. Disappointingly, his remarks on inflation basically rehashed spending initiatives and offered the questionable logic that shifting supply chains back to America necessarily cuts costs.

I would add that I saw no evidence that President Biden believes that expanding the money supply by borrowing in the trillions without increasing aggregate product or, said more simply, too many dollars chasing too few goods, has anything to do with inflation.

Update 2

One more notable thing from the SOTU that I neglected to mention. What do you believe will happen if President Biden actually follows through with the price controls on pharmaceuticals he talked about last night? I know what I think will happen: shortages. I’m completely in favor of allowing Medicare to negotiate prices, however.