Local political leaders react to President Bidens State of the Union address

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WLNE) — Politicians of Southern New England are taking in President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, covering topics like the 3.4% unemployment rate, the inflation reduction act and American manufacturing.

Biden recounted the last two years and where he plans on going from here.

“The recounting of a lot of good work that has been done, a lot of progress that we’ve made, but an acknowledgement that there’s more work to do,” Biden said.

Congressman David Cicilline was also in attendance. He said he is pleased with Biden’s effort to prioritize American manufacturing.

“The president has, I think been the most successful president in terms of really advocating for the whole making America agenda, so not only building manufacturing but making sure it happens here in the United States,” Cicilline said.

The president also said inflation has slowly been falling every month for the last six months.

Cicilline agreed there is more work to be done to reduce prices.

“The importance of continuing our focus on lowering costs, no matter how much success we’ve had in the economy, inflation is still a real issue and we’ve made progress on it, but we have more work to do in bringing down costs for hard working families,” Cicilline continued.

He added that a few of the areas he’d like to see impacted are childcare and prescription drugs.

“So, prescription drugs is a real priority, also making sure that child care is affordable, it remains one of the greatest impediments to going back to the work force,” the congressman said.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren also backing the support for universal childcare said, “Out of the 37 richest nations in the entire world, the United States comes in down at number 35 in terms of the investments we make from babies to school age.”

Warren added that Southern New England has done what it can, but there is more investing that could be made on the federal level.

“I want the federal government to be a good partner on sponsoring a universal childcare bill, and i think the president is going to be a really good partner in this too,” Warren said.

Cicilline also gave credit to the president for capping the price of insulin at $35.

“We need to apply that to all families who are using insulin as a lifesaving drug, capping the cost of insulin at 35 dollars,” he said.

The congressman said he plans on backing Biden’s push to ban assault weapons as well as voting to pass the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act.