Tonight, Congressman Patrick McHenry (NC-10) released the following statement on President Joseph R. Biden's first State of the Union Address:

"Since last January, Americans have experienced record inflation, skyrocketing prices for energy and other everyday goods, and a major crime wave in our cities. We’ve watched the ongoing crisis at our southern border as waves of illegal immigrants and illicit drugs flood our borders. This August, we saw the disastrous and tragic withdrawal of American forces in Afghanistan. At tonight’s State of the Union, President Biden had the opportunity to address these failures and offer solutions for the problems his policies created. Instead, we got more of the same. Rather than offering a plan to address the border crisis or bring down inflation, we listened to him recommit to the failed progressive policies that helped get us in to this mess in the first place. 

"The so-called solutions that President Biden laid out tonight are more of the same bad or reactionary policies we’ve seen since his Administration began. Tonight’s address itself was the perfect encapsulation of this. For months now, parents and small businesses around the country have demanded we move past COVID restrictions and mandates so that our lives and the lives of our kids could get back to normal. But in the Democrat-led House, it was only in advance of tonight’s address and in response to unfavorable polling that the rules were changed. 

"Democrats want the American people to believe that things are back to normal and are heading in the right direction. However all it takes is for an American to fill up their gas tank or head to the grocery store to know this is not the case. We need real solutions. Instead we got political theater and another laundry list of progressive policies that will only make our problems worse."