DV Journal

President Joe Biden took a victory lap at Strath Haven Middle School in Nether Providence Township on Friday after his Thursday night State of the Union speech.

While pundits have described Biden’s speech as “fiery” and “angry,” the 81-year-old Pennsylvania native was more subdued in front of the Delaware County audience. Biden’s local appearance also contrasted with his more focused and on-point performance in Washington, D.C. On Friday, he reverted to form, losing track of his thoughts and misspeaking several times.

Some of Biden’s difficult-to-parse remarks included, “We added more to the national debt than any president in his term in all of history;” and, “Pennsylvania, I have a message for you: Send me to Congress!”

But the Biden-friendly audience, which included many local politicians, cheered and applauded nonetheless, even throwing in a chant of “Four more years!”

Another key difference in his Delco speech was that Biden attacked his likely GOP opponent, Donald Trump, by name rather than referring to him as “my predecessor.”

“Folks, our freedoms really are on the ballot this November. Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans are trying to take away our freedoms,” Biden said. “That’s not an exaggeration. Well, guess what? We will not let him.”

Biden hopes the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade will again spur Democrats to vote.

“Those bragging about overturning Roe v. Wade have no clue about the power of women in America,” said Biden.

Biden touted the U.S. economy as “the envy of the world,” with “15 million new jobs in just three years” and unemployment at a “50-year low” with “800,000 new manufacturing jobs and counting.”

“Wages are up, and inflation is coming down,” he said. “Inflation’s dropped from 9 percent to 3 percent.”

He called for “the wealthy” and corporations to pay more taxes. He would set the corporate tax rate at 21 percent. “No billionaire should pay a lower tax than a teacher, sanitation worker, or nurse.”

He would set the tax rate at 25 percent for billionaires to raise $500,000 billion over the next 10 years, which the government would use to cut the deficit and “provide childcare.”

He said he’s fighting the pharmaceutical industry to lower the price of drugs and mentioned lowering the price of insulin to $35 a month for senior citizens, a move Trump made in his presidency. Biden promised he would lower the price of medications for all Americans.

Biden proposed giving Americans $400 a month tax credit toward their mortgage if it’s their first home or they’re moving to “a larger place.”

“We’re cracking down on big landlords who are price-fixing and driving up rents,” he said, adding Congress should pass his plan to “bring those rents down.”

“We’ve got $359 billion passed for climate change,” said Biden.

“We beat the NRA when I signed the most significant gun safety law in 30 years. Now, we have to beat the NRA again. I’m demanding a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines,” Biden said.

Biden told his Delco audience his goals are the same as they were in 2020: to grow the middle class, to “restore the soul of America,” and to unite the country. Republican critics were quick to respond that his State of the Union speech a day earlier was one of the most partisan and divisive in history.

On the street outside Strath Haven Middle School, pro-Palestinian protesters picketed, chanting “Genocide Joe has got to go,” among other slogans.

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President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address was his opportunity to promote his “successes” and lay out his roadmap. In touting the so-called Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) he wasted no breath, claiming it was a victory for patients due to the law’s new prescription drug price controls. That was one of many “misstatements” as it has been mislabeled and will soon hurt seniors with a raid on Medicare and Americans losing access to drugs that are currently in development.

After this election-year bill was passed, Democrats falsely declared victory over high drug prices. Sadly, too many Republicans were silent. The average American deserves to fully understand the IRA, who it really rewards, and how the law is nothing less than an ideological push aimed at furthering socialized medicine before delivering results.

In recent days culminating in the State of the Union address, the president claimed “historic progress” “on lowering health care costs under his watch, including steps to strengthen Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA)” and touting the new prescription drug provisions, which will mandate Medicare be able to negotiate drug prices.” His definition of progress is giving seniors fewer choices, innovators fewer incentives, redefining “negotiation” as “extortion,” expanding Obamacare and Medicaid and raiding Medicare for green new deal projects.

What the IRA actually does is not as straightforward as Democrats and aligned groups like AARP and left-wing think tanks would have you believe. The nasty side-effects of price controls on Medicare Part D drugs are impossible to ignore, considering this policy stunts American efforts to cure illnesses, harms drug access, and reduces options for patients relying on carefully designed drug regimens. How badly will this hurt the creation of new and life-changing drugs? A University of Chicago issue brief showed the law would result in a whopping 135 fewer new drugs, impacting the lives of 2.47 million patients. Four innovator-sponsored clinical trials have already been canceled in the first four months. How many of those drugs would have been breakthrough cures? How many would have changed the lives of patients hoping for better treatments?

Biden’s IRA victory lap does little to alleviate the unnecessary burden on Americans who are struggling with their health. America ought to lead the way in creating new and innovative treatments. The IRA even cuts back on the Trump administration’s anti-kickback regulations that limited the power of PBMs and would have lowered drug list prices. And perhaps it was a coincidence that President Biden conveniently forgot to mention that the IRA doles out billions in Medicare savings to giant health insurance companies.

It is truly something. On one hand, the Democrats crafted the IRA as a step toward an EU-style healthcare system. On the other hand, the law also hands taxpayer funding intended for Medicare to their friends in the insurance-PBM industry. Over $270 billion gone from Medicare in the name of socialist price controls, gifted to giant insurance corporations and PBMs. Isn’t that a slap in the face of people relying on Medicare?

All this being said, Biden, his party, big insurers, and supposedly “non-partisan” organizations are hijacking America’s health system for both personal benefit and ideological reasons. In the case of outside parties, they may have supported the IRA to earn a windfall. For the Democrats, moving healthcare closer to what citizens have in London and Toronto is becoming more and more their guiding light. As the IRA will soon prove, socialized medicine, with its rationed care and fewer choices for Americans, will have serious consequences for all Americans.

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The day before President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union speech, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich gave the media their thoughts on the state of the country under Biden.

In a word: Terrible.

The two pointed to polls showing Biden’s approval rating below 40 percent. And they touched on the issues Republican candidates will be running on in this fall’s midterm elections: Inflation, the economy, foreign policy, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as well as the mismanaged withdrawal from Afghanistan where Americans were left behind.

McDaniel said Republicans will offer upbeat, positive solutions in contrast to what will “not be a unifying speech and will not focus on the issues that the American people really need and are looking to address.”

McDaniel predicted the midterms this November will be “a wake-up call for Democrats.”

Biden ran as a centrist but has shifted to the left, she said.

In addition to the economy and foreign policy, people are concerned about the open border and confusing messaging on COVID.

People “are being slammed with consumer prices rising at the fastest rate in 40 years,” said McDaniel.

She cited a recent RNC poll that found 53 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Biden is doing with 41 percent approval. Biden’s approval among independent voters drops to 37 percent with 55 percent disapproving. On the economy, 49 percent of independents favor the GOP versus 32 percent for Democrats. On crime, 50 percent of independents back Republicans versus 28 percent for Democrats.

Gingrich touted Emerson College’s ‘generic ballot’ poll showing Republicans with a 9 point lead over Democrats in congressional races. He said it reminded him of when former President Bill Clinton decided in 1996 that staying on the left “would not work” and came to the middle in his State of the Union speech and announced the era of big government was over.

“Have they figured out anything from these polling numbers, or are they where Clinton was before the ’94 election when his team just couldn’t believe it?” he asked.

“You have to look at Ukraine in terms of 10 months ago in April of last year, Biden commented on Putin possibly going into Ukraine. So the failure wasn’t this week or last week,” said Gingrich.  The administration “had 10 months to help Ukraine prepare so that attacking (it) would have been crazy.

“Had he been willing to build on the things that Trump was already doing — Trump was already sending javelins, for example, which is a very sophisticated anti-tank weapon — we could have created a porcupine in Ukraine that Putin would have decided he couldn’t attack. But for 10 months, the Biden administration dithered and dathered and kept talking about negotiations, etc. and failed to use that time in a productive way.”

On inflation, Biden “has to say something, because inflation is just too big of an issue not to do something,” Gingrich said. “On oil and gas, this administration is moving in the wrong direction. They just had the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission come out with rules that make it virtually impossible to create liquefied natural gas ports, yet that’s exactly what we need to help wean Western Europe off of Russian gas.”

On education, “When 70 percent of the people in San Francisco vote to recall three members of the school board, clearly there is an issue here that the president should be addressing,” said Gingrich.

“On crime, with every passing week, we learn the damage George Soros has done in electing people who are deeply committed to putting violent criminals back on the street and putting the rest of us in danger.”

In response to a question from the Delaware Valley Journal about whether the GOP plans to call out Democrat’s long-standing opposition to expanding domestic energy production in the U.S., McDaniel said, “Absolutely.

“We’re seeing it in our pockets every day with the cost of gas and that’s directly correlated to Joe Biden shutting down drilling on federal lands, on shutting down the Keystone pipeline. And we’re importing Russian oil when we could be exporting our oil and gas. And so those are things that I think are critical to the American people. They understand it. One anecdote, I have a family member who called me this week and said, ‘I’m about as liberal, Green New Deal Democrat as I can be…I don’t know why we’re funding Russia’s war, and allowing them do to this.’ I think that’s where a lot of Americans are and that will be a big issue for the campaign going forward.”

In response to another press question, Gingrich said he’s optimistic about the Republican’s chances to take not only Congress but to win at the local levels, but said GOP candidates need to run.

“Fill up the slate,” he said. He noted that last year, an unknown truck driver beat the president of the New Jersey Senate with a campaign budget of $2,300, you look just this week we had a dramatic 17 point swing in Jacksonville, Fla. where we picked up a Democratic city council seat and we had an even bigger swing, I think it was 45 points, where we kept a Republican seat with a much greater margin, I look around, I think there are very few genuinely safe Democratic seats this year.”

The governors will also contribute “a ton of success stories” to show “why we will be better,” he said.

In fact, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds will deliver the Republican response to the State of the Union Speech.

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