On Tuesday, February 7, at 9 p.m. ET, President Joe Biden will give his second State of the Union (SOTU) Address to a Joint Session of Congress at the US Capitol in Washington, DC (7.30 am in India on Wednesday). The White House will broadcast the speech live at https://wh.gov/sotu.
According to The New York Times, the President’s ideas and themes of cooperation, exerting US leadership throughout the world, and providing the American working and middle classes a boost would likely take centre stage in the speech.
It will be one of his most important addresses to date. It will be delivered at a time when Congress and the nation are deeply divided, and the US is dealing with difficult foreign policy difficulties, particularly with regard to Russia and China.
The President has been putting a lot of effort into his speech, including how he will deliver it, according to The New York Times. The New York Times reported that Biden is the “only modern president to have a stutter, which he has managed since boyhood and still speaks of in emotional terms.”
According to a historical note on the website of the House of Representatives, the lower chamber of Congress, the US Constitution itself serves as the formal foundation for the Address.
The President “shall from time to time deliver to the Congress Information on the State of the Union, and suggest to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient,” according to Article II, Section 3, Clause 1 of the Constitution.
George Washington, the first president, delivered the first of his yearly addresses in 1790. The Address was technically known as the “Annual Message” for more than a century and a half prior to 1946; it was not dubbed SOTU at that time.
However, according to the history of the Address on the House website, the message had already begun to be colloquially known as the “State of the Union” message or address as early as 1942. The State of the Union Address was first delivered by President Harry S. Truman to Congress on January 6, 1947, and from that point on, it has been referred to as such.
SOTU In the contemporary age, speeches have been made in the House of Representatives’ chamber. The day and time that the Joint Session of Congress will hear from the President are determined by a House concurrent resolution.
The President’s Annual Message used to be delivered in December until 1934; since then, it has been delivered in January or February as part of the State of the Union address.
The 99th in-person Address/Annual Message in US history will take place at Biden’s second SOTU Address on February 7. The 1945 Address of President Franklin D. Roosevelt was read to a Joint Session of Congress; since the President did not deliver it personally, it does not qualify as an in-person address.
Prior presidents’ annual messages more closely resembled budget speeches since they contained requests for funding from agencies and broad analyses of the state of the US economy.
As a result, the Budget Message and the Economic Report were established by legislation in 1921 and 1946, respectively, as Congress demanded more in-depth reports on these areas. The President’s Annual Message was not included in these messages.
After a few years of the Annual Message, the custom of speaking to Congress personally came to an end. After a 113-year hiatus, President Woodrow Wilson brought it back in 1913. Since then, the President has used the SOTU Address as a forum to garner support for his objectives.
