What does the progressive response to President Biden's State of the Union address mean?
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Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., called for student loan debt forgiveness and passage of the Build Back Better Act and voting rights legislation during her Working Families Party's response to President Joe Biden's first State of the Union address Tuesday.
"The majority of the Build Back Better agenda is stalled, Mr. President," Tlaib, a Democrat, said on behalf of the independent political party. "Our work is unfinished. We are ready to jump-start our work again."
Tlaib also touted the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill during her address, but said her fellow Democrats need to do more work.
"We campaigned on doing even more," she said. "Roads and bridges are critical, but so are child care and prescription drugs. And we shouldn't have to choose."
Meanwhile, Biden repeatedly mentioned popular progressive policies during his address.
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"Let’s pass the Paycheck Fairness Act and paid leave," Biden said, to applause and standing ovation. "Raise the (federal) minimum wage to $15 an hour and extend the Child Tax Credit, so no one has to raise a family in poverty."
More: What Biden said about Ukraine, COVID, the economy in his first State of the Union: transcript
Although not unprecedented, a member of the president's party addressing the nation after the State of the Union is unusual. Tlaib's speech communicated a more progressive vision than Biden's address – coming at the start of the midterm election season that will determine who controls Congress next year.
This is the fifth time the Working Families Party has responded to a president's joint address to Congress.
"In no way is this response a rebuke of the president," said Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party. "In fact, progressives have been the most supportive of this president's agenda."
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Adam Hilton, an assistant professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College who studies the Democratic Party, said the progressive response to Biden is one way for them to put pressure on the policies the Democratic base strongly supports.
"I think it's their way of signaling that this is where, if not the majority of the party is, it's where one of the strongest elements driving the party is located," Hilton said.
The Green New Deal, a $15 minimum wage, Medicare for all and student loan cancellation remain popular among Democratic voters. A Morning Consult poll from May 2021 found 79% of Democrats support the single-payer option. A Navigator Research survey published in February found 63% of people overall wanted some form of student loan debt cancellation.
Tlaib's response to Biden highlights the growing tensions among the liberal and moderate factions of the Democratic Party in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.
More: Rep. Rashida Tlaib will deliver a response to the State of the Union. Who is she?
Progressive Democrats have often criticized Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona for blocking legislation.
Manchin's opposition to the Build Back Better Act essentially killed the House-passed social safety legislation. Sinema and Manchin's opposition to eliminating the 60-vote filibuster threshold in January foiled Biden's efforts to pass a voting rights bill.
Arizona Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva said House Democrats have done their job by passing legislation that will improve the lives of Americans but now the legislation sits in a "fog" in the Senate.
"We sent legislative packages to the Senate that I thought were significant," said Grijalva, a former co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "It fundamentally dealt with the issues: everything from, poverty, to voting rights, to democracy, to climate change. And now they're stalled."
Biden barely made mention of the legislation during his address Tuesday night, focusing instead on COVID-19, inflation, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, his Supreme Court nominee and his administration's successes.
But Mitchell, of the Working Families Party, said Democrats should not give up passing the legislation.
"Our hope is that there's still time for this Congress to act," Mitchell said. "And so our hope is that folks in the Senate, including Sen. Manchin, take seriously the fact that planks of Build Back Better are very, very popular, including in West Virginia."
Progressive Democrats continued to say Tuesday night that they want Biden to go further on social and climate change policies.
"I do think that we there's a lot left to be desired on climate," New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an original sponsor of the Green New Deal, said after Biden's speech. "We had discussions about EVs (electric vehicles), which is great, but we really need to talk about how we're shifting our country's energy resources and how we're shifting to clean renewable energy."
Illinois Democratic Rep. Sean Casten, a climate expert who ran for Congress in 2018, hoped Biden would address climate change during his address.
“My goodness, in this moment we’re in with Ukraine right now, it would be hard to make a more explicit case that shows that if you want to make sure that we do not continue to funnel money to corrupt petrol states, let's invest in energy efficiency and renewables at home,” Casten said.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal called on Biden to use his executive privileges to enact progressive policies.
“President Biden has significant power to effect immediate, meaningful change for people across America, and we urge him to use it aggressively," Jayapal said in a statement Tuesday night.
"The president can use his executive authority to bring down the costs of prescription drugs and stop Big Pharma’s price gouging; decrease carbon emissions to fight the climate crisis; cancel student debt and bolster our economy; protect workers’ rights and raise their wages; and provide immigration relief and rebuild our refugee system."
Jayapal also said she wanted Biden to address the student loan debt crisis, which he did not mention in his speech.
"I wished he would have," Jayapal told reporters. "I was looking for him to say something on it, but I still feel optimistic that we're going to get some kind of action on student debt cancellation. And hopefully, it'll be before the moratorium expires."
At the end of last year, the Biden administration extended the student loan moratorium until May 1.
Texas Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro similarly said he had wanted Biden to address the student loan crisis.
"It would have been great to hear about it tonight," Castro said Tuesday. "But there are, of course, a lot of issues that he was trying to cover. I know that the administration cares a great deal about it and I hope that they will end up forgiving a substantial part of student loan debt for the American people because it's holding a lot of people back."
Biden spent part of the State of the Union on providing economic relief to the American public and bringing down federal budget deficits, in a bid to win over Manchin's support.
As midterm campaigning kicks into high gear, moderates and progressives have differed on how best to appeal to voters, given the politically difficult climate Democrats face.
Moderates want to move away from "defund the police" campaign slogans and focus instead on fixing the economy. After the 2020 election, House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn repeatedly said the "defund the police" slogan hurt Democratic congressional candidates.
Notably, Biden called for increased funding to law enforcement during the State of the Union.
"We should all agree the answer is not to defund the police, it's to fund the police," Biden said.
Casten, a centrist, is facing a challenge from Democratic Rep. Marie Newman, vice chair for communications of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, for Illinois’ 6th Congressional district. But Casten said the ideological diversity in the Democratic party is part of the party's appeal.
"One of the consequences of the Republican Party being completely captured by the most extreme base, is that the Democratic Party has become exceptionally ideologically diverse," Casten said.
"To go from Rashida on the far left, all the way to Joe Manchin and still be in the same party is pretty remarkable.”
Likewise, William Howell, a Sydney Stein professor of American politics at the University of Chicago, said giving voice to a variety of voices within the Democratic Party will be key to maintaining party strength.
"I would view the dual speeches ... within the Democratic ranks as not so much one expressing dissension towards the other, but an indication of the diversity within the ranks of the Democratic Party," Howell said.
Political scientists point out that despite lacking the power to enact some of the more left-leaning policies, progressives have enough clout to make Biden pay attention to their concerns.
"To me, it seems like more and more of the party is being drawn toward that kind of progressive pull in the party," Hilton said. "And I think that had a lot to do with the enthusiasm behind Bernie Sanders in 2016 that took most of the party establishment by surprise."
Should Democrats lose the House or the Senate, as political scientists have predicted, progressives and moderates will likely blame the other faction.
A recent USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll found Biden's approval numbers at 39%, with 47% of those surveyed saying they would prefer Congress be under Republican control.
Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds attacked Biden during her response to the State of the Union Tuesday.
"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," Reynolds said. "When runaway inflation was hammering families, a violent crime wave was crashing on our cities, and the Soviet army was trying to redraw the world map."
State of the Union: Biden faces a nation rattled by inflation, uncertain of his leadership
Tlaib's speech Tuesday highlighted the arguments progressives have made that they are more supportive of Biden's agenda than the moderate wing of the party.
"No one fought harder for President Biden's agenda than progressives," Tlaib said.
Grijalva said that ultimately, Democrats cannot afford to give up on voting rights, climate change and other progressive priorities solely due to Republican opposition or pushback from Manchin and Sinema.
"This is no time to abandon those issues, because they represent the future," Grijalva said. "And they represent, I think, a big part of the Democratic base."
Contributing: Dylan Wells
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rashida Tlaib, progressives react to Biden's State of the Union
