- Three House Democrats are giving responses to Biden's State of the Union, an unusual move.
- Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Colin Allred will speak on behalf of progressives and the CBC, respectively.
- Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a centrist, will speak on a panel hosted by No Labels.
Every year after the president's State of the Union, a member of the opposing party traditionally gives a formal response. This year, Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa is set to give the official Republican response to President Joe Biden's big speech on Tuesday night.
But, unlike in previous years, Biden will get multiple responses from his own party — a highly unusual development that reflects some of the splits within the Democratic caucus. As of Tuesday morning, three Democratic members of Congress from across the ideological spectrum will also give their own speeches after Biden's State of the Union.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, a member of a group of progressive House lawmakers of color that calls themselves "the Squad," was the first to announce she would give a State of the Union response on behalf of the Working Families Party.
Fox News reported on Monday that Rep. Colin Allred of Texas would give a State of the Union response on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Then, on Monday night, the centrist group No Labels announced that "immediately following" the speech, it would host "an unprecedented bipartisan perspective" panel featuring Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, the two co-chairs of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in Congress.
Gottheimer skewered Tlaib for planning a State of the Union response in comments to Axios on Monday, calling it "massively counterproductive" and "like keying your own car and slashing your own tires."
But both Tlaib and Gottheimer have unfinished business with Biden's economic agenda.
In 2021, the White House and congressional Democratic leaders sought to enact Biden's economic plans with a "two-track" strategy: first passing a landmark bipartisan infrastructure bill and then a larger social spending and climate package, known as the Build Back Better agenda, that Democrats planned to pass along party lines in the Senate.
Both chambers passed the bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021. But the key elements of Build Back Better struggled to gain consensus within the Democratic caucus, and Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia officially put the final nail in the coffin of Build Back Better in a December 2021 Fox News interview.
Since then, there's been little to no sign of Build Back Better coming back from the dead. Policy-wise, Manchin is far more interested in a bipartisan deal on election reform, and the Senate is preoccupied with the crisis in Ukraine and confirming Biden's Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Tlaib denied that her message would be confrontational or critical of Biden himself and Axios suggested she would instead criticize Manchin — if anyone.
"Despite some sensational coverage, it's simple: I'm giving a speech about supporting President Biden and his Build Back Better agenda for the people," Tlaib tweeted. "Look past the headlines & hear progressives' vision for working with the President & Congress to deliver for our residents."
"This is about the people who are hurting w/o BBB," she added.
Gottheimer, meanwhile, is a leader of the so-called SALT Caucus in Congress, a group of Democrats who want to raise the cap on the amount of state and local taxes that people can deduct from their federal taxes. The deduction, which primarily benefits well-off suburban homeowners in places like Gottheimer's Northern New Jersey district, was limited under President Donald Trump's 2017 tax overhaul.
But, to be sure, not every House Democrat is happy with the split-screen programming.
"Democrats giving a response to democratic President SOTU…priceless," Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia, a vulnerable moderate Democrat, tweeted on Tuesday morning.
—Elaine Luria (@ElaineLuriaVA) March 1, 2022