Let me be clear, our forces are not engaged and will not engage in conflict with Russian forces in Ukraine.
Our forces are not going to Europe to fight in Ukraine, but to defend our NATO Allies – in the event that Putin decides to keep moving west.
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Now our infrastructure is ranked 13th in the world.
And tonight, I’m announcing that this year we will start fixing over 65,000 miles of highway and 1,500 bridges in disrepair.
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Raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and extend the Child Tax Credit, so no one has to raise a family in poverty.
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It’s time for Americans to get back to work and fill our great downtowns again. People working from home can feel safe to begin to return to the office.
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We should all agree: The answer is not to Defund the police. The answer is to FUND the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities.
Worth quoting in full:
And for our LGBTQ+ Americans, let’s finally get the bipartisan Equality Act to my desk. The onslaught of state laws targeting transgender Americans and their families is wrong.
As I said last year, especially to our younger transgender Americans, I will always have your back as your President, so you can be yourself and reach your God-given potential.
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.
And soon, we’ll strengthen the Violence Against Women Act that I first wrote three decades ago. It is important for us to show the nation that we can come together and do big things.
I prefer reading speeches primarily because I’m always short on time and reading without a pause for clapping is more efficient. The downside is any variations of this speech at delivery are lost.
I quoted the portions that resonated most with me. We must defend NATO even if we don’t activate defenses in Ukraine but USA and allies are doing all they can without literally going to war in Ukraine. Infrastructure is huge. Our country is crumbling and the massive construction that occurred in the 40s and 50s…that construction is crumbling. Concrete buildings, billions of pounds of concrete across our nation is cracking and crumbling. It’s reaching end of life over the next 25 years and we’re not prepared for it. Private and Public efforts are going to happen that disrupt our conversion to renewable resources. It’s not far fetched to imagine we’ll have to rebuild every high-rise in New York that was built last century over the next 50 years.
$15 an hour is $28,800 a year pre-tax. It’s not enough.
Biden calling out the need to return to offices is interesting. I wonder who had that written in? We’re on the verge of a collapse of commercial real estate markets. Once leases begin to expire over the next 5 years, it could trigger a recession. Billions of square feet of space will be emptied and tech companies are already moving on to “stay home, live in VR”
Defund the police was poorly executed. It was a protest seated in truth and reality but poorly named and poorly marketed. There’s not a single community that will eliminate law enforcement i.e. defunding it from their budgets at the city / county or state level. I wish that had never caught on because I don’t think anyone wanted to eliminate LEOs entirely. I’m glad to see Biden acknowledge it’s not possible while still recognizing there needs to be a change in how policing is conducted.
Finally, human rights. This part of the speech I quoted in full. We have people of all colors, genders and sexual orientations who are discriminated against daily. It has to stop yet these laws and societal changes are met with push back every step of the way. Millions of Americans will have a half life of opportunity, lifespan, economic prosperity and freedom from being jailed or worse, completely ignored by a society who wrote in 200 years of laws to ensure they never rise to their fullest individual potentials. Children born today are in this group and many more millions will be born into modern day slavery because of their race, gender, sexual orientation. It is criminal and we need to change it.