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Good evening. Im Senator Tim Scott from the great state of South Carolina. We just heard President Bidens first address to Congress. Our president seems like a good man. His speech was full of good words. But President Biden promised you a specific kind of leadership. You promise to unite a nation, to lower the temperature, to govern for all Americans, no matter how we voted. This was the pitch. You just heard it again. But our nation is starving for more than empty platitudes. We need policies and progress that brings us closer together. But three months in, the actions of the president and his party are pulling us further and further apart. I wont waste your time with finger pointing or partisan bickering. You can get that on TV any time you want. I want to have an honest conversation about common sense, and common ground. About this feeling that our nation is sliding off its shared foundation and how we move forward together. Growing up, I never dreamed I would be standing here tonight. When I was a kid my parents divorced. My mother, my brother and I moved in with my grandparents. Three of us sharing one bedroom. I was disillusioned and angry. And I nearly failed out of school. But I was blessed. First with a praying mom. And let me say this to the single mothers out there who are working their tails off, working hard, trying to make the ends meet wondering if its worth it. You can bet it is. God bless your amazing effort on the part of your kids. I was also blessed by a Chick-fil-A operator, John Moniz. And finally, with a string of opportunities that are only possible here in America. This past year, Ive watched Covid attack every rung of the ladder that helped me up. So many families have lost parents and grandparents too early. So many small businesses have gone under. Becoming a Christian transformed my life. But for months, too many churches were shut down. Most of all Im saddened that millions of kids have lost a year of learning when they could not afford to lose a single day. Locking vulnerable kids out of the classroom is locking adults out of their future. Our public schools should have reopened months ago, other countries did. Private and religious schools did. Science has shown for months that schools are safe. But too often powerful, grown ups set science aside and kids like me were left behind. The clearest case Ive seen for school choice in our lifetimes, because we know that education is the closest thing to magic in America. Last year, under Republican leadership, we passed five bipartisan Covid packages. Congress supported our schools, our hospitals, saved our economy and funded Operation Warp Speed, delivering vaccines in record time. All five bills got 90, 90 votes in the senate. Common sense found common ground. In February, Republicans told President Biden we wanted to keep working together to finish this fight. But Democrats wanted to go it alone. They spent almost $2 trillion on a partisan bill that the White House bragged was the most liberal bill in American history. Only 1% went to vaccinations, no requirement to reopen schools promptly. Covid brought Congress together 5 times. This administration pushed us apart. Another issue that should unite us is infrastructure. Republican support everything you think of when you think of infrastructure. Roads, bridges, ports, airports, waterways, high speed broadband, were in for all of that. But again, Democrats want a partisan wish list, they wont even build bridges to build bridges. Less than six percent, the presidents plan goes to roads and bridges. Its a liberal wish list of big government waste. Plus the biggest job killing tax hikes in a generation. Experts say when all is said and done, it would lower wages of the average American worker and shrink our economy. Tonight, we also heard about a so-called family plan. Even more taxing, even more spending to put Washington even more in the middle of your life from the cradle to college. The beauty of the American dream is that families get to define it for themselves. We should be expanding opportunities and options for all families, not throwing money at certain issues because Democrats think they know best. Infrastructure spending that shrinks our economy is not common sense. Weakening our southern borders and creating a crisis is not compassionate. The president is also abandoning principles hes held for decades. Now he says your tax dollars should fund abortions. Hes laying groundwork to pack the Supreme Court. This is not common ground. Nowhere do we need common ground more desperately than in our discussions of race. I have experienced the pain of discrimination. I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason. To be followed around a store while Im shopping. I remember every morning at the kitchen table, my grandfather would open the newspaper and read it, I thought. But later I realized he had never learned to read it. He just wanted to set the right example. Ive also experienced a different kind of intolerance. I get called Uncle Tom and the n-word by progressives, by liberals. Just last week, a national newspaper suggested my familys poverty was actually privilege. Because a relative owned land generations before my time. Believe me, I know firsthand our healing is not finished. In 2015 after the shooting of Walter Scott, I wrote a bill to fund body cameras. Last year after the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, I built an even bigger police reform proposal. But my Democratic colleagues blocked it. I extended an olive branch. I offered amendments. But Democrats used the filibuster to block the debate from even happening. My friends across the aisle seemed to want the issue more than they wanted a solution. But Im still working. Im hopeful that this will be different. When America comes together, weve made tremendous progress, but powerful forces want to pull us apart. 100 years ago, kids in classrooms were taught the color of their skin was their most important characteristic. And if they looked a certain way, they were inferior. Today kids are being taught that the color of their skin defines them again. And if you look a certain way, theyre an oppressor. From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we havent made any progress at all. By doubling down on the divisions weve worked so hard to heal. You know this stuff is wrong. Hear me clearly. America is not a racist country. Its backwards to fight discrimination with different types of discrimination, and its wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present. Im an African-American whos voted in the South my entire life. I take voting rights personally. Republicans support making it easier to vote and harder to cheat. And so do the voters. Big majorities of Americans support early voting, and big majorities support voter I.D. including African-Americans and Hispanics. Common sense makes common ground. But today, this conversation has collapsed. The state of Georgia passed a law that expands early voting, preserves no excuse mail in voting, and despite what the president claimed, did not reduce election day hours. If you actually read this law, its mainstream. It will be easier to vote early in Georgia than in Democrat-run New York. But the left doesnt want you to know that. that they want people virtue signaling by yelling about a law they havent even read. Fact checkers have called out the White House for misstatements. The president absurdly claims that this is worse than Jim Crow. What is going on here? Ill tell you. A Washington power grab. This misplaced outrage is supposed to justify democrats new sweeping bill that would take over elections for all 50 states. It would send public funds to political campaigns you disagree with and make the bi-partisan Federal Elections Commission partisan. This is not about civil rights or our racial past. Its about rigging elections in the future. And no, the same filibuster that President Obama and President Biden praised when they were senators, the same filibuster that the Democrats used to kill my police reform bill last year has not suddenly become a racist relic just because the shoe is now on the other foot. Race is not a political weapon to settle every issue the way one side wants. Its far too important. This should be a joyful springtime for our nation. This administration inherited a tide that had already turned. The coronavirus is on the run. Thanks to Operation Warp Speed and the Trump administration, our country is flooded with safe and effective vaccines. Thanks to our bipartisan work last year, job openings are rebounding. So why do we feel so divided? Anxious. A nation with so much cause for hope should not feel so heavy laden. A president who promised to bring us together should not be pushing agendas that tear us apart. The American Family deserves better. And we know what better looks like. Just before Covid, we had the most inclusive economy in my lifetime. The lowest unemployment rates ever recorded for African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. And a 70 year low nearly, for women. Wages for, hear me, wages were growing faster at the bottom than at the top. The bottom 25% saw their wages go up faster than the top 25%. That happened because Republicans focused on expanding opportunity for all Americans. In addition to that, we passed opportunity zones, criminal justice reform, and permanent funding for historically Black colleges and universities for the first time ever. We fought the drug epidemic, rebuilt our military, and cut taxes for working families and single moms like the one that raised me. Our best future will not come from Washington schemes or socialist dreams. It will come from you, the American people. Black, Hispanic, white and Asian. Republican and Democrat. Brave police officers in Black neighborhoods. We are not adversaries. We are family. We are all in this together. And we get to live in the greatest country on Earth. The country, where my grandfather in his 94 years saw his family go from cotton to Congress in one lifetime. So I am more than hopeful. I am confident that our finest hour has yet to come. Original sin is never the end of the story. Not in our souls and not for our nation. The real story is always redemption. I am standing here because my mom has prayed me through some really tough times. I believe our nation has succeeded the same way. Because generations of Americans in their own ways have asked for grace and God has supplied it. So I will close with a word from a worship song that really helped me through this past year of Covid. The music is new, but the words draw from scripture. May the Lord bless you and keep you. Make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May his presence go before you and behind you and beside you. In your weeping and your rejoicing. He is for you. May his favor be upon our nation for thousand generations. And your family and your children and their children. Good night. And God bless the United States of America.

Continued here:
Tim Scott Will Deliver the Republican's Rebuttal to Biden - The New York Times

The current 117th Congress is only four months old, but already five Republican senators and six Republican representatives have announced they will not stay in their current jobs. Add in a slew of Republican retirements in the 2018 and 2020 election cycles, and a narrative has formed that longtime GOP stalwarts are heading to the exits because they are unhappy with the fanatical turn the party took under former President Donald Trump. We live in an increasingly polarized country where members of both parties are being pushed further to the right and further to the left, and that means too few people who are actively looking to find common ground, Sen. Rob Portman said in January when announcing his retirement. This is a tough time to be in public service.

On the one hand, Portman is right that this is a tough time to be a Republican in Congress. There has been a remarkable amount of turnover among congressional Republicans in the Trump (and post-Trump) era. Of the 293 Republicans who were serving in the Senate or House on Jan. 20, 2017 the day of Trumps inauguration a full 132 (45 percent) are no longer in Congress or have announced their retirement or resignation.

And many of these Republicans lets call them the Ciao Caucus likely did leave due to their disapproval of Trump. Fifty-seven of them retired or are retiring from politics completely including Trump critics like former Sen. Jeff Flake and former Rep. Will Hurd as well as several members of the moderate Tuesday Group. Most obviously, two former Reps. Justin Amash and Paul Mitchell even quit the GOP to become independents before they left Congress. And some representatives among them former Rep. Mark Sanford, who voted with Trump only 71 percent of the time (one of the lowest rates for a Republican) lost to a more hardline primary challenger. (On the other hand, one Republican who lost reelection in the primary did so to a less conservative challenger: Former Rep. Steve King so openly supported white nationalism that the party turned its back on him, throwing its support behind the more moderate Rep. Randy Feenstra.)

Plenty more Republicans have left for reasons having nothing to do with Trump, though. For instance, 21 retired or announced they plan to retire to run for a different office, which they probably wouldnt have done unless they still felt at home in the Republican Party. (Indeed, this list includes some of Trumps staunchest allies, including now-Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Rep. Doug Collins and Rep. Mo Brooks, who is running for Senate with Trumps endorsement.) Another 29 Republicans wanted to stay but only left because they lost in the 2018 or 2020 general elections. Whats more, the resignations category which you might think would include some of the most defiant anti-Trumpers of all actually skews toward Trump loyalists because eight of them resigned in order to join his administration. And even of the 57 members who retired completely, several probably did so for more mundane reasons than disliking the direction Trump was taking the party in, like being term-limited out of powerful committee chairmanships.

Overall, the 132 Republicans no longer in Congress are only slightly more moderate than the 161 Republicans who remain. DW-Nominate uses voting records to quantify the ideology of every member of Congress on a scale from 1 (most conservative) to -1 (most liberal). The Ciao Caucus has an average score of 0.482 while those who stayed have an average score of 0.492. (The more liberal Ciao Caucus score appears to be solely due to the Republicans who lost general elections, who skew moderate. Excluding them, the Ciao Caucus has an average DW-Nominate score of 0.495 more or less as conservative as those who stayed.)

But the question remains: Did those 132 Republican departures open the door for more conservative replacements? In one obvious sense, they did not: Thirty-nine of them were replaced by Democrats, allowing Democrats to take control of both the House (in 2019) and Senate (in 2021) and moving the chambers to the left in the process.

But were more interested in the effect these departures had on Republicans internally. And all this Republican turnover has indeed nudged the GOP caucus to the right: first, by culling a few dozen of its members from swing districts and states, who, as weve seen, tended to be more moderate; and second, by replacing outgoing Republicans with more conservative models.

We should be careful not to overstate this either, though. There are 81 members of the Ciao Caucus who were replaced by a fellow Republican. Together, they had an average DW-Nominate score of 0.504, while their replacements had an average DW-Nominate score of 0.555 so, more conservative, but not overwhelmingly. And while a majority of the 81 (47, to be precise) were replaced by more conservative Republicans, a good number (33) were actually replaced by more moderate ones. The biggest difference, though, is that only five of the replacements were significantly more moderate (a difference of 0.200 points or more) than their predecessors, while 17 were significantly more conservative.

Its not hard to find examples of seats whose members became more conservative. Former Rep. Scott Tipton, a fairly mainstream Republican (with a DW-Nominate score of 0.451), has been replaced by firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert (0.798). The late Rep. Walter Jones (a notable maverick, with a DW-Nominate score of 0.244) has been replaced by a reliable Republican vote in Rep. Greg Murphy (0.547). Even Collins, a Trump favorite who was already plenty conservative (0.610), was replaced by someone even further right: Rep. Andrew Clyde (0.879). The biggest shift of all came in New Mexicos 2nd District, where Rep. Steve Pearce (0.472) was replaced by Rep. Yvette Herrell (0.936), the most conservative politician in Congress. (In case youre wondering, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene actually didnt represent a huge rightward shift for her district: She has a 0.807 DW-Nominate score, but her predecessor, former Rep. Tom Graves, was already very conservative, with a 0.716 score of his own. Of course, Greene has certainly brought more rhetorical extremism to Congress.)

There are fewer examples of seats becoming represented by someone noticeably more moderate, but they exist. DeSantis (0.663) was succeeded by Rep. Michael Waltz (0.416); King (0.613) was succeeded by Feenstra (0.413). Ironically, the two biggest swings to the left came as a result of the departure of two of Trumps loudest critics: Amash and Sanford. (They may have been anti-Trump, but they were still plenty conservative, with DW-Nominate scores of 0.654 and 0.686, respectively.) Their districts both strongholds of old-school conservatism that have moved left in the era of Trump are now represented by Reps. Peter Meijer (0.235) and Nancy Mace (0.305), who are already developing maverick reputations of their own. Mace forcefully criticized Trump for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection, and Meijer even voted to impeach Trump over it.

You could also add the transition from former Sen. Orrin Hatch to Sen. Mitt Romney to this list. Although DW-Nominate doesnt see this as a big ideological shift (from 0.382 to 0.321), Hatch voted with Trump 96 percent of the time, while Romney has become one of the most vocal anti-Trump Republicans in Congress. So even as the GOP is becoming more conservative overall, fresh anti-Trump voices are still getting added to the mix.

The Republican exodus since Trump took office has gotten plenty of attention but the coverage too often focuses on incomplete takeaways like what Republican retirements mean for Democrats chances. But given that the vast majority of states and congressional districts are safe for one party or the other, turnover has far more impact on the ideology and direction of the party itself. That story is a complicated one for the GOP, with some moderates giving way to conservatives and some conservatives giving way to moderates. But overall, it does seem as if the conservative, pro-Trump side is winning out.

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Congressional Republicans Left Office In Droves Under Trump. Just How Conservative Are Their Replacements? - FiveThirtyEight

Have you heard about the Republican arguments against President Bidens economic plans? Me neither.

Its not that Republican opposition doesnt exist. Every Republican in Congress voted against Mr. Bidens economic recovery package, the American Rescue Plan.

But roughly 100 days into Mr. Bidens presidency, as he has proceeded with spending plans that the administration and friendly observers have increasingly described in historic terms as an update to and expansion of the New Deal and a wholesale reorientation of the relationship between the federal government and the economy the Republican opposition has largely been a matter of dull reflex.

What Republicans havent done is make a concerted public argument against Democratic economic policies. One complication is that to do so would be to engage in hypocrisy so blatant and obvious that it would negate any impact. But this stems partly from a deeper problem, which is that the party no longer has a cognizable theory of government.

Republicans spent the presidency of Barack Obama leveling attacks on Democratic fiscal policy: Debt and deficits were out of control, they said, and spending restraint had disappeared. The Tea Party was, at least at first, nominally a movement in response to Obama-era economic policy the stimulus in the wake of the housing market crash and then the Affordable Care Act that conservative activists saw as overreach.

Yet Donald Trump campaigned on not touching Medicare and Social Security, and during his presidency, the Republican Party ran up federal debt and deficits and increased federal spending even before the pandemic. Tea Party-style lawmakers in the House Freedom Caucus, instead of resisting this move, became some of the most vocal defenders of the Trump agenda.

And when the pandemic hit, many Republicans supported enormous, deficit-financed spending bills in response, totaling nearly $4 trillion. It was not the first time that Republicans had recently run up the federal tab: Total government spending and deficits grew under President George W. Bush as well.

So who would believe that this party genuinely supports limited government?

Part of the Republican Partys weakness as an opposition party is structural. Republican politicians dont care that much about solving problems through public policy because Republican voters dont care that much, either: In a recent Echelon Insights poll, only 25 percent of Republicans said they believed the goal of politics is to enact good public policy; that number shrank to 19 percent among the partys most dedicated Trump supporters.

Part of it is historical, an outgrowth of the partys recent strategy of opposing Democratic plans without unifying around alternatives of their own. That generalized refusal to engage with policy trade-offs became endemic under Mr. Trump, whose shallow approach to so much economic policy made the already difficult work of developing and uniting around innovative policy ideas effectively impossible.

Its not that the party has no ideas at all. But there is little in the way of consensus on economic policy and how to improve it, even among those who are looking to forge new paths for the right: Notably, when Senator Mitt Romney of Utah introduced a proposal for a broad-based child allowance, he was attacked by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida who had previously made waves by pushing to expand the child tax credit.

This highlights another quandary for the party: To the extent that the party is trying out different ideas, they are often scaled back variations on policy ideas more typically associated with Democrats. Mr. Bidens recovery plan, for example, included a one-year expansion of the child tax credit.

Mr. Rubio, meanwhile, recently backed the drive for a union at an Amazon facility in Alabama. And Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas has called for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $10 an hour not the $15 an hour favored by Mr. Biden, but still an increase.

Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri has called for a $15 minimum for large corporations, and last year teamed up with Senator Bernie Sanders to push for larger direct payments to households as part of pandemic relief legislation. Outside the realm of budgets and spending, Mr. Hawley has proposed antitrust legislation of the sort one might normally expect to find coming from Senator Elizabeth Warren.

And this points to the deeper problem: The Republican Party, at the very least, lacks a coherent sense of what economic policy and legislation should do and what it is for.

Because it has no theory, the Republican Party cannot offer much in the way of a critique of Democratic governance. Its not as if there arent arguments to make: The recovery bill was larded with pre-existing Democratic spending priorities that had little to do with pandemic relief.

So the substantive debates are conducted not between left and right but between the left and the center left or perhaps the obstreperous left. Its telling that some of the most stinging critiques of Mr. Bidens macroeconomic policy have come from the likes of Larry Summers, an economist long associated with the Democratic Party.

Republicans have effectively abdicated responsibility for both economic policymaking and economic policy argument, and so Mr. Bidens $1.9 trillion recovery plan sailed through Congress, with an even larger wave of infrastructure spending likely to follow.

Republicans have attacked that plan as not being infrastructure a fair point, to some degree, but also not exactly an argument for why Mr. Bidens proposals shouldnt pass. (Republicans finally did release a loose counterproposal.)

Rather than push back on the proposals particulars, they have focused more on attacking its tax increases. Taxes are the one major economic policy issue Republicans continue to care about, but a party that cares only about taxes and not about spending is, in some ways, how we got here in the first place.

Republicans are not only failing themselves; they are failing their duty, as an opposition party, to present an informed critique of the ruling partys governance. If the party expects to convince the public that Democrats have overreached and overspent with Mr. Bidens economic programs, they will need to make sure voters have also heard coherent arguments against them.

Peter Suderman is features editor at Reason Magazine.

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Opinion | The Republican Party Is Failing in Too Many Ways - The New York Times

The speech offers Scott a national platform and a chance to speak to many Americans for perhaps the first time at a moment in which he is playing a critical role in the effort to weave together a policing bill that can pass the narrowly divided US Senate.

While Scott is keeping many of the details of his speech to himself, the South Carolina Republican said he's done "an appropriate level of practice."

"You do your homework and you do your best to ... anticipate what he's going to say and be in a position to share with the nation a different way, at least what I think is a better way," Scott said on Tuesday.

Scott would not elaborate on which issues he plans to address or if he would be discussing the effort to overhaul policing.

"I think it should be a surprise to everybody," he said of his speech, but, as a well-known fan of colorful socks, he did divulge that he had bought a new pair especially for the occasion.

Working toward a compromise bill

But a new political environment in a non-election year and an increasing sense of urgency spurred by a number of police shooting deaths across the country have given this effort a better chance of bipartisan success.

Bass recently told CNN that lowering the standard is essential to cutting a final deal.

"Because the point is that we have got to hold police officers accountable," Bass said. "Essentially now the standard that's used to prosecute an officer is so high. That's why they're never held to account. So you need to lower it just like you would for anybody."

On Tuesday, Scott declined to say if the group had resolved those two key issues.

"I think we're actually making progress overall," Scott told CNN. "I hate to litigate and/or fight with through the press on these issues. They are really important issues to communities that are very vulnerable. We are trying to get to a place where we can solve those issues."

Booker said Tuesday that the group is getting closer to its goal.

"It has to be meaningful, substantive reform. We're not going to get everything done in one bill. There are larger, deeper problems in our country around policing that we have to try to address, but this bill must make meaningful strides to making real reforms and making people safer, making policing more accountable and more transparent and making sure that we hopefully curtail or end certain practices that we shouldn't have in the United States," Booker said.

But it could take some time. Bass has said she hopes to have a deal by the anniversary of Floyd's death on May 25.

'A very healthy relationship'

All eyes remain on Bass, Booker and Scott, who will ultimately decide if a deal can be reached. There is genuine friendship and respect among the three, who have spoken effusively of one another as this has played out.

"A very healthy relationship," Scott said of the trio. "That does not mean we all agree, but the good news is I think we trust each other enough to actually make progress on substantive issues where there is disagreement. I think it's really helped."

"Tim is a friend and an honest broker," Booker said on Tuesday. "We may disagree on a whole host of things, but we have worked together to get major bills done in the past. I have a lot of faith in him. I believe we're in a historical moment. History has its eyes on us. And there's an urgency in our country, and may we both rise in this Senate negotiation to get something substantive and meaningful done."

Booker added that Scott is a "good faith actor, and he's also a Black man in America who knows a lot of these issues personally. If anybody can get it done on his side, he's the right person to be negotiating with."

Bass has praised Scott as a "wonderful ally and partner."

When Bass was seen heading to Booker's office on Monday to meet with Scott and him, she was carrying vegan cupcakes. Booker, who is a vegan, was about to celebrate his birthday.

The three also bring with them the strong backing of their leadership and the understanding that if they agree to it, their leadership will as well.

Booker said this week that he's confident Scott can deliver GOP votes if they are able to get a deal. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has publicly supported Scott's current efforts on overhauling policing after asking him last summer to craft the original GOP proposal.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday that he had met with Booker and Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who is Senate majority whip and chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, for an hour earlier this week to discuss a potential bill. Booker has said he's been given "wide latitude" to do everything he can to get a deal.

"They're making good progress with Sen. Scott," Schumer said on Tuesday. "This is a serious problem. We need strong legislation. And we're hopeful that the Booker-Scott negotiations can produce just that."

CNN's Manu Raju, Lauren Fox and Ali Zaslav contributed to this report.

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Tim Scott's Republican rebuttal comes as his role in policing bill negotiation is also in the spotlight - CNN

Lisa Desjardins:

That's right, Judy.

We have never seen an address like this in U.S. history. And it's possible, we may not ever see one like this again. Because of COVID restrictions, let me run through a little bit about what's going to happen in the House chamber tonight.

First of all, just 200 people total, about that many, will be in the chamber for that speech. That's different than the 1,400 that are usually crammed in side by side, even up in the galleries.

Now, tonight, everyone in the chamber will have needed to either be tested negative for COVID or prove that they are fully vaccinated, meaning two weeks after that final vaccination shot.

And to space out the lawmakers that will be in there, they will be using the balconies. So, it's hard for me to say what people will be seeing, but likely you will be seeing lawmakers dotted throughout the chamber. I was able to get in there and look, and you will see that some rows only have one person in them. Republicans are seated on one side of the chamber, Democrats on the other.

They had been mixing that up in years past, but, this year, it looks like they will keep them in partisan aisles.

Now, as much as I think that that will be the dominant image, this strange image of lawmakers dotting the House chamber, we will also have something else unprecedented happening tonight. That will be the two people standing behind President Biden will be two women for the first time, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris, because she is the president of the Senate.

So, that is something also to look forward to. And, in addition, we will have the first address from an African American Republican senator be in the response for the Republicans, Tim Scott. He told me he's been practicing for days.

And we know a little bit about what he's going to say. To counter President Biden's message of his agenda, we expect Senator Scott to talk about the Republican agenda, the idea that Republicans are the party of opportunity. And he will say that the economy was at its best before the pandemic, when Republicans were in charge.

And he will make an argument that Republicans should be back in charge again.

Link:
What to expect from Biden's joint address to Congress and the Republican response - PBS NewsHour