GRAND RAPIDS — ”Putin is now isolated from the world more than he has ever been,” President Joe Biden said in the opening minutes of his 2022 State of the Union address, highlighting a unified American response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
During Biden’s address Tuesday evening in Washington, he spoke about the ongoing invasion and efforts between the U.S. and its allies to support Ukraine, in addition to several of his administration’s domestic priorities such as voting rights, combating rising inflation, the electrification of the transportation system to fight climate change and other challenges facing the nation.
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West Michigan lawmakers praised Biden’s message on sanctioning Russia for its aggression in Ukraine, although both Reps. Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland, and Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, said the White House should take additional steps to hurt Russia’s energy exports.
“It was good to see strong support on both sides of the aisle for Ukraine and it’s people this evening,” Huizenga said in a statement. “While President Biden made impassioned statements, we must do more to help our Ukrainian allies. First and foremost, it doesn’t make sense for America to continue to buy Russian oil when it funds Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.”
While the U.S. has levied heavy economic sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden defended his decision to preserve access to Russian energy in order “to limit the pain the American people are feeling at the gas pump,” the Associated Press reported.
Both Republican lawmakers called on the Biden administration to take more steps toward American energy independence, with Upton calling for the reopening of the Keystone Pipeline, although it’s unclear if the pipeline would completely offset the U.S.’ dependence on Russian oil.
“The Biden Administration needs to stop their war on American energy and approve Liquid Natural Gas exports to Europe to open up new markets while reducing their dependence on Russian natural gas,” Upton said in a statement.
Biden spent the bulk of the first part of his address, which lasted just over an hour, reinforcing U.S. commitment to levying sanctions on Russia and trying to stop its military operations in Ukraine.
More: Biden details new Russian sanctions as death toll climbs in Ukraine
Whitt Kilburn, a political science professor at Grand Valley State University, likened Biden’s address to that of a wartime president. Biden entered the White House with a sprawling agenda last year, and while the president was successful with the passage of packages like the American Rescue Plan and a bipartisan infrastructure bill, other efforts, namely the “Build Back Better” social program package, were stalled in Congress.
“What’s sort of scrambled everything is now suddenly, Biden looks more and more like a wartime president in a way that feels different from Afghanistan,” Kilburn said.
“What seems unknown at this point is how any of that will affect how successful Biden can be in getting his domestic items that he’s been campaigning on passed through Congress, and whether that might have any impact on his popularity that spills over into midterm elections.”
Democrats, in addition to the White House, currently hold a narrow majority in the House and the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. Traditionally, the party of the president tends to fare poorly in the midterm elections immediately following their election. For example, in 2018, Democrats were able to retake control of the House following former President Donald Trump’s election in 2016.
For Biden and Democrats, ceding control of either chamber to Republicans would signal a major blow to the president’s domestic agenda. Kilburn said it’s possible the White House reshapes its domestic efforts to focus on select initiatives rather than try to pass a single, large package.
“It probably would make more sense politically for him to try to find some common ground with very specific items of legislation that might have more bipartisan support, to the extent that that’s possible, even if that might alienate some of the more left wing members of the Democratic caucus in Congress,” he said.
— The USA Today Network contributed to this report. Contact Arpan Lobo at alobo@hollandsentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter @arpanlobo.
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Ukraine, Russian sanctions major focus of Biden State of the Union address
