Republicans meet Biden's calls for unity with partisan broadside
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[February 08, 2023]
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Republicans rejected Democratic U.S. President Joe
Biden's call for bipartisanship in his State of the Union address on
Tuesday, and instead accused him of stoking culture wars in a nation
they described as deeply divided.
A day after Republican U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called on Biden
to work together toward compromise on the debt and spending, Arkansas
Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders delivered a partisan broadside during
the party's official rebuttal to Biden's speech.
"In the radical left's America, Washington taxes you and lights your
hard-earned money on fire. But you get crushed with high gas prices,
empty grocery shelves and our children are taught to hate one another on
account of their race," said Sanders, who was White House press
secretary under former President Donald Trump.
"The Biden administration seems more interested in woke fantasies than
the hard reality Americans face every day," she said.
In his first State of the Union address to a Congress that includes a
Republican-controlled House of Representatives, Biden touched on some
hallmarks of America's culture wars - assault weapons, abortion and
transgender youth. But those issues represented only a small fraction of
what was largely an economic speech.
Biden did pledge to work with Republicans, as during the last Congress
when both chambers were controlled by Democrats.
The president's congressional audience included Republican lawmakers who
question his 2020 election victory over Trump and have begun moving
forward with investigations of his family and administration.
"To my Republican friends, if we could work together in the last
Congress, there is no reason we can’t work together and find consensus
on important things in this Congress as well,"
Biden said.
Biden and McCarthy, who as speaker sat behind the president during the
address, remain at loggerheads in their approaches to the $31.4 trillion
debt ceiling, which must be addressed in coming months to avoid a
first-ever default.
"Mr. Speaker, I don't want to ruin your reputation, but I look forward
to working with you," Biden told McCarthy at the outset of his remarks.
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U.S. President Joe Biden greets members
of Congress as he arrives to deliver his State of the Union address
before a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber at the U.S.
Capitol in Washington, U.S., February 7, 2023. REUTERS/Leah Millis
Republicans hope to exact spending cuts from Biden in exchange for
raising the debt ceiling.
But Biden, who said he wants to reduce the federal deficit by taxing
the wealthy, made it clear that he would not be pushed into
accepting Republican spending cuts. He drew boos and shouts of
"liar" by asserting that some Republicans would like to "sunset"
Social Security and Medicare.
McCarthy has vowed to remain resolute in demanding spending cuts
from Biden. But with a razor-thin House majority and a fractured
party conference, he had difficulty being elected speaker last month
and could struggle to unite his members.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Sunday found just 43% of
Republicans approve of McCarthy's job performance. That's a far
lower rate of support from within his own party than Biden, who had
the approval of 76% of Democrats.
The speech appeared to foreshadow a second presidential campaign
Biden is likely to launch in coming weeks - a possibility that did
not escape Trump, who has already launched his own 2024 White House
bid.
In a two-minute pre-recorded video, Trump presented what he called
"the real State of the Union" as that of an inflation-wracked nation
overrun by drug-traffickers, killers, rapists, violent criminals and
"millions and millions of illegal aliens."
The former president, facing several investigations from federal and
state prosecutors, also described himself as "a victim" of Biden's
Justice Department.
(Reporting by David Morgan and Gram Slattery; Editing by Scott
Malone and Lincoln Feast.)
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