In 1947, President Harry Truman delivered the first televised State of the Union Address. After years of increased public viewership, President Lyndon Johnson was the first President to deliver the address in the evening in 1965. Almost every President since has used the occasion to reflect on the previous year and lay out their plan to move our country forward.  

On Tuesday night, I had hoped to hear the President recognize the difficulties our country is facing here at home – unrelenting inflation, a weak economic outlook, spikes in crime in nearly every city, and a broken border that has contributed to record drug overdose deaths across the county – and explain his plan to address them. Equally important are the threats we face from our adversaries around the world.  Last week, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made a clear statement of how little it respects our country with its spy balloon that drifted across our sky in plain sight. That spy operation is just one of the many ways the CCP attempts to undermine our democracy. On a daily basis they are stealing our intellectual property to make counterfeit products; they use technologies like TikTok to accumulate massive amounts of data on our citizens while spreading misinformation to our youth; they operate fake companies to pull money out of our financial markets; and they’re buying our farmland at an alarming rate, just to name a few. 

The State of the Union would have been the perfect opportunity for the President to acknowledge the challenges we face. I’m not suggesting any President would stand there and blame themselves for every problem in the country, but at the very least he could acknowledge problems exist. While gas and groceries remain unaffordable for many families, the President was telling us how great the economy is. He used a stat about wage growth to back up his point, which on the surface sounded pretty good; we all want wages to grow. But we only got half the story on Tuesday. What the President didn’t mention was the fact that inflation continues to outpace wage growth. According to the Biden Administration’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics, what is commonly called “real income,” which is a person’s income after being adjusted for inflation, went down last year.  For example, if your paycheck went up by 5% but inflation went up by 6%, your real income actually decreased by 1%. December of 2022 was the 21st month in a row that real income was negative. That is the reason every Missourian I’ve talked to over the last few days is so frustrated with the President’s statements.    

While there was much more I did not agree with, the President did make a couple points that I was happy to hear. Most notably, the Administration finally appears to understand that we have a problem at our southern border. Although he was thin on details, he showed a willingness to work with Congress to address the immigration crisis that is now touching every part of this country. That conversation must start with securing the border. In order to stop the fentanyl that is killing so many Americans, end human trafficking, and stop the rampant crime coming in from Mexico, we have to close the border. If the President is serious about that commitment, he will find plenty of Republicans ready to work with him. 

Perhaps the biggest omission in the President’s speech is the biggest external threat to the United States: China. Just days after the CCP violated our airspace and captured untold amounts of information on our people, the President noted more concern over the climate and police officers who apparently need to “earn the community’s trust.” I can tell you that in every community I visit in the Third District, the police have done more than enough to earn our respect.  

The Administration’s reluctance or outright refusal to take a tough stance against China is part of a troubling trend that we’re seeing from governments and large corporations around the world. Celebrities and multinational executives are afraid to say a negative word about the CCP, let alone condemn the slave labor and genocide it openly practices, because they don’t want to risk the massive amount of money they’re making there. For the President of the United States to respond to China with such weakness is extremely concerning not only for the American people, but also our allies around the world. 

Last month House Republicans and Democrats voted to establish a Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the U.S. and Chinese Communist Party. I was honored to be appointed to the bipartisan committee. We will be examining all aspects of our relationship with China, including the abuse of the Chinese people and the CCP’s aggression toward the rest of the world. We will highlight the flaws in our own approach toward China, and champion policies to maintain our position as the world’s dominant power - both militarily and economically. There is no doubt the CCP will hate our discoveries and disparage our work. And our proposals will likely make some people uncomfortable, particularly those who do business with the CCP. The fact of the matter is we can no longer act like the country that commits mass murder of its own people, launches millions of cyber attacks on us every day, and physically threatens our citizens is our friend. Anyone who does is either lying to themselves or lying to you.