Biden's address was not a lofty speech, as Barack Obama delivered. Nor did he come out swinging, as Donald Trump did. But his address made clear he still believes Americans can work together.

President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday in Washington.(WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES)

President Joe Biden, facing a deeply partisan and divided Congress, offered a "unity agenda" in his first State of the Union address Tuesday night, asking Democrats and Republicans to join him in thwarting Russian aggression overseas and building a safer and healthier place at home.

"We can’t change how divided we’ve been. It was a long time in coming," Biden said. "It was a long time in coming. But we can change how we move forward – on COVID-19 and other issues we must face together."

Biden's address was not a lofty speech, as Barack Obama has delivered. Nor did Biden come out swinging, as his predecessor Donald Trump did in his addresses. Biden did not tick off a long laundry list of ambitious domestic spending proposals, as presidents have done in the past.

Instead, Biden delivered a brass-tacks talk about America's role in the world in fighting tyranny and listed ways the two feuding political parties could come together to address more broadly popular issues, such as ending the opioid crisis, buying American-made goods, improving mental health and helping veterans.

Biden walked into the chamber as a leader grappling with myriad crises and struggling with an approval rating hovering around 37%. His Build Back Better bill, a sweeping domestic spending package, is virtually dead in Congress, with two Democratic senators withholding their support. Americans are exhausted by the pandemic. One of those Democratic lawmakers, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, spent much of the evening chatting with or sitting with Republicans.

But Biden, frequently looking to the GOP side of the chamber and sometimes thanking Republicans for their help in passing certain bills, said it was time to stop letting the pandemic and other crises divide the nation.

"Let’s use this moment to reset. Let’s stop looking at COVID-19 as a partisan dividing line and see it for what it is: a God-awful disease," Biden said to the assembled lawmakers, Supreme Court justices and Cabinet members – unmasked, in a signal of the pandemic's retreat.

"Let’s stop seeing each other as enemies and start seeing each other for who we are: fellow Americans," he added.

Biden seemed at ease in his old workplace, talking about nuts-and-bolts legislation more than providing a vision for America. Afterward, Biden – in a scene not witnessed since before the pandemic – stayed afterward to hug and talk with members of Congress.

The president began his remarks with a tribute to the Ukrainian people and a denunciation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who invaded his western neighbor a week ago. Winning applause from both sides of the aisle, Biden lauded Americans' "unwavering resolve that freedom will always triumph over tyranny."

Putin "thought he could roll into Ukraine and the world would roll over. Instead, he met a wall of strength he never imagined," Biden said. "He met the Ukrainian people."

Lawmakers – many of whom dressed in yellow and blue or wore ribbons with those colors to honor the Ukrainian flag, gave a standing ovation to Oksana Markarova, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, who was seated in first lady Jill Biden's box in the House chamber.

The president also earned loud applause when he announced he would ban Russian aircraft from U.S. airspace and appoint a task force to investigate crimes of Russian oligarchs.

"We’re coming from your ill-begotten gains," such as luxury apartments, yachts and private jets, Biden said. As for Putin, "he has no idea what's coming," Biden said.

Political Cartoons

Months ago, the Biden camp hoped the president could deliver a State of the Union address to a country largely recovered from COVID-19, uninvolved in foreign wars or conflicts and ready to implement his sweeping Build Back Better Act.

Instead, Biden faced a country not quite out of the pandemic's grip, fearful of a third world war as Putin moves into Ukraine and anxious about high inflation.

"I know you're tired, frustrated and exhausted," the president said. But "thanks to the progress we have made this past year, COVID-19 need no longer control our lives." He announced that Americans will now be able to get a second set of free tests by mail. Further, the administration is launching a "test-to-treat" initiative so people can get tested for free at a pharmacy and get no-cost antiviral pills on the spot if they test positive.

On inflation, Biden said he would move to "lower your costs, not your wages." One way to do that, he said, was to make more semiconductors and cars in America, "instead of relying on foreign supply chains."

Nor did Biden even mention the broad – and expensive – Build Back Better legislation. Instead, and without using the name of the doomed bill, he listed several of the package's most popular items, such as capping insulin costs at $35 a month and helping families pay for child care. He reframed his domestic economic agenda as a way of tackling inflation and reducing costs for Americans.

While Biden acknowledged that inflation is “robbing” the gains that Americans are making, Republicans took aim at the domestic and international crises unfolding under his presidency.

“We’re now one year into his presidency and instead of moving America forward it feels like President Biden and his party have sent us back in time to the late ‘70s and early ‘80s,” Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said in the GOP’s response to Biden’s speech. “Weakness on the world stage has a cost. And the president’s approach to foreign policy has consistently been too little too late.”

Biden's unity agenda" also was decidedly less controversial than some of the proposals he floated in his campaign and last year.

In true Biden fashion, he still sought to extend an olive branch to Republicans even at an incredibly polarizing time in the U.S. and in Washington.

He thanked Democrats and Republicans for passing the trillion-dollar infrastructure bill crafted by members in both parties. More than two dozen Republicans across both chambers ultimately voted for the bill, which was signed into law last November.

“While it often appears that we never agree, that isn’t true. I signed 80 bipartisan bills into law last year, from preventing government shutdowns to protecting Asian Americans from still-too-common hate crimes to reforming military justice,” Biden said. “And soon, we’ll strengthen the Violence Against Women Act that I first wrote three decades ago.”

And like he did in his inaugural address delivered a little over a year ago, Biden is seeking to find other areas of bipartisan support that can pass Congress and find a sense of unity that has at most times been elusive.

The president’s four-part unity agenda focuses on combating the opioid epidemic, improving mental health for children as it relates to the negative effects of the pandemic and online bullying, supporting veterans and defeating cancer.

“It is important for us to show the nation that we can come together and do big things,” he added.

Biden tossed out a few bones to the progressive wing of his party, complaining about the Trump-era tax cut he said benefited only the top 1% of the country – a line that got some boos and hoots from the Republican side of the chamber. The president also reiterated his support for transgender children and for abortion rights, getting nods of approval from Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California.

It was the first time in history that the president had two women behind him while delivering a State of the Union address.

But the president also made it clear he did not subscribe to the rhetoric of the left wing of his party.

"We should all agree: The answer is not to defund the police," Biden said, as someone in the chamber yelled, "Right!"

"The answer is to fund the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities," Biden said, getting a standing ovation from the Republican side of the chamber as well.

And while Biden said that he would not raise taxes on Americans making less than $400,000 a year – a subtle jab at National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott, whose 2022 election plan includes making sure every American pays something in taxes – the president also rejected the idea that his party is led by a socialist, as Republicans have charged.

"I’m a capitalist, but capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism," the president said. "Capitalism with competition is exploitation."

Despite the nation’s challenges, "the state of the union is strong – because you, the American people, are strong," Biden said in closing. "We are stronger today than we were a year ago. And we will be stronger a year from now than we are today."

Source: https://www.usnews.com/