Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-New York) had guarded praise for Joe Biden but urged the president and the nation to go bigger and bolder on issues like economic and racial justice and the climate crisis in his rebuttal to the president’s first joint address to Congress Wednesday evening. Bowman’s speech was a rare rebuttal to a presidential address from the progressive faction of the president’s own party.
Bowman praised steps taken by the White House and Democrats in Biden’s first 100 days in office to provide COVID-19 relief and propose trillions in infrastructure investments. But Biden’s infrastructure proposals, the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plans, while promising, aren’t sufficient to address the massive problems that the nation faces on the climate, care economy and employment, Bowman said.
Instead, Bowman called on Democrats and progressives to push forward on pressing issues facing the nation as it recovers from four years of mayhem under former President Donald Trump and deals with a Republican Party that has positioned itself as a permanent roadblock to progress.
Bowman called out colleagues such Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and lauded the growing power of the left.
With Democratic control of Congress and the White House, Bowman said now is the time to pass the bold policies that he highlighted in his speech. He mentioned climate bills, such as the Green New Deal for Public Housing and Green New Deal for Cities, introduced earlier this month by fellow progressive colleagues, including Ocasio-Cortez, to provide funding for more climate-friendly public housing and cities.
Bowman also called out the THRIVE Act, a $10 trillion infrastructure and climate justice bill of which Bowman is a lead sponsor. The bill, Bowman said, could help create 15 million union jobs to help the U.S. economy bounce back while addressing the climate crisis and environmental justice issues.
The New York representative also called on Democrats and progressives to strengthen unions and labor in the U.S. by passing the Protecting the Right to Organize, or PRO Act, which the House passed last month. The PRO Act is sweeping labor legislation with pro-union proposals that impose harsher penalties on companies that attempt to bust unions and override states’ so-called right-to-work laws that weaken unions financially.
Bowman then went on to address issues of anti-Black police violence in the country. Black activists have brought wide attention to the movement for Black lives over the past year as uprisings against police brutality sprang up after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd last May. Since then, many more police-perpetrated killings have been caught on camera, which Bowman said has traumatized him.
Bowman called on the country to acknowledge that racism is implicit in nearly every facet of American life. The country must address historic injustices against Black people and go forward to heal as a nation, the lawmaker said, and called on viewers to join the progressive movement in pressing forth.
