President Biden's 2023 State of the Union address

President Joe Biden said that “over the last two years, a record 10 million Americans applied to start new businesses.”  

Facts First: This is true. There were about 5.4 million business applications in 2021, the highest number since 2005 (the first year for which the federal government released this data for a full year), and about 5.1 million business applications in 2022. Not every application turns into a real business, but the number of “high-propensity” business applications — those deemed to have a high likelihood of turning into a business with a payroll — also hit a record in 2021 and saw its second-highest total in 2022.  

Former President Donald Trump’s last full year in office, 2020, also set a then-record for total and high-propensity applications. There are various reasons for the pandemic-era boom in entrepreneurship, which began after millions of Americans lost their jobs in early 2020. Among them: some newly unemployed workers seized the moment to start their own enterprises; Americans had extra money from stimulus bills signed by Trump and Biden; interest rates were particularly low until a series of rate hikes that began in the spring of 2022. 

For weeks the White House has claimed Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare. 

For weeks Republicans have said that’s not true. 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy explicitly said entitlement cuts or changes were not on the table in exchange for a debt ceiling increase. His colleagues agreed. 

But White House officials, keenly aware Republicans hadn’t laid out their own plan, elevated the issue anyway. 

The conditions were set for a State of the Union clash — one Biden’s advisers quietly hoped would come to fruition. 

Mission accomplished. 

Biden made a point of caveating his claim Republicans wanted to cut Medicare and Social Security, noting it only applied to “some” Republicans. 

But the Republican response was immediate — and fierce, with several, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, seen on camera yelling "liar.” 

Far from offended, Biden played along with the backlash. 

“So folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security, Medicare is off the books now, right?... Alright. We got unanimity,” Biden ad-libbed.

Reflecting on the pandemic, and the country's recovery from the virus, President Joe Biden paused to remember the human toll of Covid-19.

Still, the president touted his administration's ability to re-open up the country.

"While the virus is not gone, thanks to the resilience of the American people and the ingenuity of medicine, we've broken the Covid grip on us," Biden said.

The administration has said it will end the public health emergency this spring, but the president said Congress still needs to "remain vigilant" and fund some efforts to "monitor dozens of variants and support new vaccines and treatments."

The mood shifted markedly in the room as President Joe Biden attacked the GOP over the debt ceiling standoff before singling out some unnamed Republicans, contending they are looking to slash and sunset Medicare and Social Security.

“Liar!” at least Republican blurted out but it was unclear who yelled out at him.

When Biden he said some Republicans want to end the programs after five years, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Troy Nehls jumped to their feet and yelled back, but it was unclear what they said.

Many shook their heads no.

It’s been a tense mood since Biden has been touting all the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act.

As President Joe Biden’s transformative legislative agenda looked all but dead, White House officials made a strategic decision to ditch its well-worn moniker: Build Back Better.

It was banned inside the West Wing. Not a joke, as Biden himself might say. 

It worked. Maybe the correlation wasn’t exactly a straight line, but Biden and his team resuscitated a scaled back version of the economic and climate proposals that served as the cornerstone of the proposal. 

Flash forward to Tuesday night, and Biden had a new frame for what that agenda created: “We’re building back pride.” 

At the heart of Biden’s economic theory of the case is reconnecting communities hollowed out by decades of international trade and technology.

Industrial policy, once considered a pejorative, sits at the heart of many of major legislative wins. Rebuilding those communities – and reconnecting their residents to the pride in their individual hometowns — may seem trite or idealistic in its intent. 

Yet it’s central to Biden’s agenda and tonight, central to his State of the Union address.

President Joe Biden has a series of go-to sayings that his advisers acknowledge people might not understand.

Yet those sayings are an animating feature of his conversations privately – and every once in a while they make an appearance in a public setting.

That’s exactly what happened when Biden went off script as he described the push by some Republicans to undo his cornerstone economic and climate law known as the Inflation Reduction Act.

“As my football coach used to say, ‘Lots of luck in your senior year,” Biden said veering off his prepared remarks with a grin.

He translated the line a moment later.

A shorter version of a saying he brings out every few months: "Good luck, guys. You have no shot. Lots of luck in your senior year."

President Joe Biden said, “In the last two years, my administration has cut the deficit by more than $1.7 trillion — the largest deficit reduction in American history.” 

Facts First: Biden’s boast leaves out important context. It is true that the federal deficit fell by $1.7 trillion under Biden in the 2021 and 2022 fiscal years, including a record $1.4 trillion drop in 2022 — but it is highly questionable how much credit Biden deserves for this reduction. Biden did not mention that the primary reason the deficit fell so substantially was that it had skyrocketed to a record high under then-President Donald Trump in 2020 because of bipartisan emergency pandemic relief spending, then fell as expected when the spending expired as planned. Independent analysts say Biden’s own actions, including his laws and executive orders, have had the overall effect of adding to current and projected future deficits, not reducing those deficits. 

Dan White, senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics — an economics firm whose assessments Biden has repeatedly cited during his presidency — told CNN’s Matt Egan in October: “On net, the policies of the administration have increased the deficit, not reduced it.” The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group, wrote in September that Biden’s actions will add more than $4.8 trillion to deficits from 2021 through 2031, or $2.5 trillion if you don’t count the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill of 2021. 

National Economic Council director Brian Deese wrote on the White House website in January that the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill “facilitated a strong economic recovery and enabled the responsible wind-down of emergency spending programs,” thereby reducing the deficit; David Kelly, chief global strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds, told CNN in October that the Biden administration does deserve credit for the recovery that has pushed the deficit downward. And Deese correctly noted that Biden’s signature legislation, last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, is expected to bring down deficits by more than $200 billion over the next decade. 

Still, the deficit-reducing impact of that one bill is expected to be swamped by the deficit-increasing impact of various additional bills and policies Biden has approved. 

Just moments after issuing a call to unity with Republicans to work together, President Biden called out members of the GOP who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure law when it was being considered by Congress.

After highlighting the progress that's been made to fund projects around the country through the infrastructure law, the president jabbed Republicans who voted against the bill but continue to ask to have their projects funded through the law's provisions.

"I want to thank my Republican friends who voted for the law and my Republican friends who voted against it as well. But I still get asked to fund the projects in those districts as well," Biden said. "But don't worry. I promised I'd be the president for all Americans. We’ll fund these projects. And I’ll see you at the ground-breaking."

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who opposed bill when he was minority leader and it was considered by the House, was sitting behind Biden during the State of the Union remarks.

President Joe Biden called for the passage of the "Billionaire Minimum Income Tax" during his State of the union address.

The tax would require households worth more than $100 million to pay at least $20 on their full income, including unrealized investment income.

Biden also said he proposes "that we quadruple the tax on corporate stock buybacks and encourage longterm investments instead." "They will still make a considerable profit," he added.

"Look I'm a capitalist, but pay your fair share. A lot of you at home agree with me and many people know the tax system is not fair. It is not fair," Biden said to applause.