President Joe Biden is due to address a joint session of Congress in the State of the Union next month, but if some Republicans get their way, there are going to be new rules in place next year.
As reported Monday by Fox News, the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 requires the president to submit his budget no later than the first Monday in February, and the National Security Act of 1947 requires the president a national security proposal at the same time.
Apparently, Biden was supposed to submit both by Feb 5, and Congress still hasn’t seen either.
Republican Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia explained to Fox, “This is irresponsible. Until Congress receives the president’s national security strategy and budget, he has no business delivering a State of the Union address.”
However, there are no real penalties for failing to do so, so Republicans are proposing a new bill, known as SUBMIT IT (Send Us Budget Materials and Internal Tactics in Time), to change that.
The bill was proposed by Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, according to the New York Post.
In a statement, according to the Post, Ernst said, “actions speak louder than words, folks, and Biden’s budget is late once again. If the president is going to be allowed the opportunity to address Congress and the entire nation, he should actually have a plan in place.”
Granted, the bill has basically no chance of passing in a Democratic-controlled Senate. And no chance of being signed by Biden if it did pass. And even in the the remote chance both of those events happened, it would also not take effect 2025.
But it could help alleviate Biden’s notorious tardiness, and bring attention to an endemic issue going back at least to Bill Clinton’s presidency.
Should Biden be allowed to give a State of the Union address?
Biden himself has submitted his budget 115, 49, and 31 days late each year of presidency, Kurt Couchman, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank Americans for Prosperity, told Fox. Barack Obama regularly submitted his budgets late, and even Donald Trump submitted his budget 38 days late in the first year of his presidency, Fox reported.
“Over the past several decades, presidents’ budget and defense proposals have been delayed more and more as missed deadlines have become an ever-more common symptom of the breakdown of the budget process,” Couchman told Fox.
The bill, therefore, is not necessarily directed at Biden alone, but is also an attempt to rectify a longstanding issue between the president and Congress.
Biden is still set to give the State of the Union address on March 7, but with the ongoing frustration between himself and Congress, it’s not likely that he’s going to have much inspiring to say (let alone anything coherent).
After all, what’s he going to talk about?
How he’s made inflation astronomically worse across the board?
How his ineptitude in withdrawing from Afganistan may have emboldened Hamas to attack Israel?
How he’s still failed to achieve anything resembling peace in the Ukraine, all while giving the Ukrainian government billions of taxpayers’ dollars?
His speech will likely try to put some lipstick on the big of his atrocious track record, but most voters aren’t going to be fooled by his positive spin.
And hopefully, those voters will make their disdain for him clear come November.
