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House Republicans said the U.S. is “in crisis” under President Biden as small businesses suffer and crime and drug overdoses skyrocket.
Ahead of Biden’s State of the Union address, House Republicans held the “real State of the Union” to criticize the president’s performance in handling the several crises facing the country, including inflation, COVID-19 mandates and drug overdoses, among others.
The event saw House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and his House GOP leadership colleagues joined by several of their fellow Republicans in the conference, including Reps. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin, Julia Letlow of Louisiana and Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa.
STATE OF THE UNION 2022: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., said the state of the union is “in crisis” while House Republican Conference chairwoman Elise Stefanik of New York told Fox News Digital in a comment after the event that she expects Biden to use his address to “erase the failures of his past year and try to pass the buck to others.”
“What I hope to hear is a total shift on his policies and rhetoric,” Stefanik said. “We’re going in the wrong direction because of the failed, unified, far-left government.”
Jordan said that he believes the “American people have had it with the stupid policies” coming from congressional Democrats and the administration and that he hopes the president will say he’s backtracking from those policies in his speech.
U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA)
(Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Steil touched on inflation while answering a question from event guest Patrice Onwuka, the director of the Independent Women’s Forum’s Center for Economic Opportunity.
“We gotta get prices under control,” Steil said in his response, adding that inflation “really clobbers” people on fixed incomes and that the GOP needs to “rip the bandaid off” COVID policies and tone down spending.
In addition to Onwuka, joining the GOP lawmakers was a slate of special guests and their families, including co-owner of D.C. bar The Big Board Eric Flannery and Addison George, the Indiana high school student who criticized her school for not pushing back on Governor J.B. Pritzker’s mask mandate.
Flannery — whose D.C. bar was forcibly shut down by Mayor Muriel Bowser’s administration for not complying with the city’s COVID-19 mandates — did not mince words when speaking at the event, accusing the mandates of being “un-American” and “illegal.”
House Republican Conference Chair Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.
(Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Ok., a small business owner himself, commended Flannery for standing up to the capital city’s “arbitrary” COVID-19 rules and called Bowser a “dictator in D.C.”
McCarthy also commended Flannery for standing up to Bowser, saying it was “refreshing to hear” when the Big Board owner challenged the D.C. mayor’s mandates.
Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., and Julia Letlow, R-La., touched on fentanyl and education, respectively, when speaking at the event, with McMorris Rodgers saying the fentanyl addiction scourge is “like a nuclear bomb went off in our country.”
U.S President Joe Biden will give his first State of the Union address on Tuesday night
(Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Letlow passionately spoke on the role of education in the upcoming elections, pointing to the recent GOP Virginia election wins as evidence parents are “fed up” with what’s happening in their kids’ curriculums.
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The Louisiana congresswoman also promoted the Parents’ Bill of Rights legislation that she is leading.
Biden will be giving his State of the Union address on Tuesday night in the U.S. Capitol, which saw its mask mandates end just this week ahead of the president’s speech.
