WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden is likely to highlight his responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in his first State of the Union address Tuesday evening. But Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., and House Republican leaders expect the president will struggle to defend a first-year record tainted by “crisis after crisis.”
“The state of our union is in crisis because of Joe Biden,” Stefanik said Tuesday morning. “Tonight, President Biden will try to rewrite history of the past year and pass the buck instead of taking responsibility for the failures of his radical, far-left Democrat agenda.”
While Biden has received bipartisan support for his recent sanctions against Russia and its central bank, lawmakers in both parties have criticized him for a lack of urgency by waiting for other European nations and NATO allies to coordinate a unified response.
“The war on Ukraine represents one of the greatest foreign policy failures in modern history,” Stefanik said. “For months, President Biden failed to engage in meaningful deterrents against Russian aggression.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Monday that the president will focus his speech on the nation’s rapid economic recovery after the pandemic plunged the U.S. into a recession that left millions jobless.
Biden is expected to highlight the low unemployment rate – 4% as of January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics – and America’s role as the single-largest provider of humanitarian assistance to Ukraine.
“He will talk about the steps we’ve taken to not only support the Ukrainian people with military and economic assistance but also the steps he’s taken to build a global coalition imposing crippling financial sanctions on President [Vladimir] Putin, his inner circle and the Russian economy,” Psaki said.
In addition to deploying a Disaster Assistance Response Team to the region, the U.S. has provided more than $106 million in humanitarian assistance to Ukraine in the past year, according to the White House. The president on Friday also authorized an additional $350 million in military assistance for Ukraine’s frontline defenders.
House Republicans criticized Biden Tuesday for his economic relations with Russia before the recent invasion. After Stefanik noted that the U.S. imported a record amount of oil from Russia last year, Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., said the administration was “buying oil from our adversaries.”
The U.S. increased its oil imports from Russia by about 28% in the first 11 months of 2021, according to the most recent data from the Energy Information Administration. Though the U.S. did double its crude oil imports from Russia last year, those imports only accounted for about 3% of overall U.S. crude oil imports in 2021.
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