Pelosi invites Biden to deliver State of the Union address

WASHINGTON: US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has invited President Joe Biden to deliver his first State of the Union address on March 1.

"Indeed, this past year has been historic: with the life-saving American Rescue Plan, once-in-a-century Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and, soon, the truly transformational Build Back Better Act," Pelosi wrote in a letter to Biden.

"In that spirit, I am writing to invite you to address a Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday, March 1, to share your vision of the State of the Union," Pelosi wrote.

During his address to a joint session of Congress last April, Biden rolled out his administration's top legislative priorities and touted the achievements in his first nearly 100 days in office, Xinhua news agency reported.

But this year's address would be his first formal State of the Union, when the president typically speaks about the past year's accomplishments and the agenda for the coming year.

Over the past year, Biden signed a $1.9-trillion Covid-19 relief package and a roughly $1-trillion infrastructure investment bill. But his Build Back Better (BBB) agenda, a roughly $2-trillion social spending and climate bill, has hit a major roadblock in the Senate.

"Instead of abandoning BBB altogether, perhaps Democrats in Congress and the Biden administration will return in January and attempt to slim down the package while making all the policies that remain permanent," said Michael Pugliese and Karl Vesely, economic analysts at Wells Fargo Securities.

"There is no hard procedural deadline for BBB on the horizon, but the first quarter of the year will probably determine whether it becomes law or not," they noted.

Since the inauguration of former President Ronald Reagan in 1981, US presidents have not delivered the State of the Union the year they left office or were inaugurated, primarily because a president can't really speak about the state of the country just a few weeks in office, according to local media. (IANS)

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