As it happened: Biden speech to Congress: 'America on the move again' (2024)

Thanks for joining our live coverage of President Biden's first address to Congress.

Read our roundup of the key moments from tonight.

It's wheels up tomorrow morning as the president visits former president Jimmy Carter and ex-first lady Rosalynn in Georgia.

Your live coverage was brought to you by Ritu Prasad, Sam Cabral, Anthony Zurcher and Tara McKelvey, and edited by Jude Sheerin.

If Joe Biden runs for a second term in 2024, his potential Republican challengers will be ready.

Chris Christie, who is rumoured to be considering another 2024 run, wasted no time sharing his reaction to the president's remarks.

In his role as a regular contributor to ABC News, Christie commented: "The words of this speech sounded like what you would hear from a 15 year old if you gave him a credit card with no credit limit on it."

"Except the words came from an adult who should know better," he continued.

A former governor of New Jersey and former federal prosecutor, Christie ran for president in 2016 but dropped out early and became a close ally of Donald Trump. He has disavowed the former president since the riot at the US Capitol in January.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy slammed the president's big spending proposals in a statement released shortly after his speech.

Arguing the economy is "on the vergeof an incredible comeback", he says Biden is instead focused on "the mostradical socialist agenda in American history".

McCarthy claims the White House will crush economic opportunity because it is intent on raising taxes, destroying jobs and indebting future generations.

"When you add it all up,the cost of the Biden Spending Spree is astonishing: over $6,000,000,000,000 inhis first 100 days," he writes.

"Republicans will workwith anyone to rebuild America, restore our way of life, and renew the AmericanDream," he goes on.

"But we cannot tax and spend our way out of our problems, and we cannotallow the United States to go down the path of socialism."

Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly praised parts of Biden's first address - but says he was left wanting on immigration issues.

"While I share President Biden’s urgency in fixing our broken immigration system, what I didn’t hear tonight was a plan to address the immediate crisis at the border, and I will continue holding this administration accountable to deliver the resources and staffing necessary for a humane, orderly process as we work to improve border security, support local economies, and fix our immigration system."

Kelly's state is in the south-western US and lies along the border with Mexico, meaning many there have experienced the immigration crisis first hand. He is up for re-election next year.

Here's the beginning of Biden's speech when he notes a historic first sitting right behind him.

In his rebuttal, Republican Tim Scott is lashing out at the Democratic criticisms of the new Georgia election law.

Democrats have said this new law aims to restrict voting in future elections, but Republicans who control the state's government say it expands access and increases election security.

Defending Georgia’s law, he says big majorities of voters support voter ID measures. Scott says it is a mainstream law that makes it easier to vote early than in Democratic New York.

He says the president “absurdly claims this is worse than Jim Crow”, a reference to historic US racial segregation.

"This is not about civil rights or our racial past, it's about rigging elections in the future," Scott says.

"Race is not a political weapon to sell every issue the way one side wants,” he adds.

Our Reality Check team took a look at what exactly is in this new election law.

The Biden administration has been vocal about the need to follow Covid-19 restrictions, especially wearing a mask and standing at least 6ft apart.

That makes the president and his team easy prey for critics when they are not following those rules themselves.

During Biden's speech, lawmakers sat spaced apart inside the venue, with their masks on.

But, with the speech ending, they gathered together to surround the president and hobnob with fellow legislators.

Andrew Clark, an alumnus of the Trump administration, quickly called it out as "asinine theater".

South Carolinian Tim Scott, who is the only black Republican senator (Democrats have two), is now addressing issues of racism in America.

"I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason, to be followed around a store for no reason," he says.

He adds that his grandfather never learned to read, but would hold up the newspaper to set the right example at the breakfast table

He says he gets called horrible racial slurs by liberals and progressives.

"Believe me, I know first-hand our healing is not finished."

He accuses Democrats of wanting "the issue more than they want the solution".

"America is not a racist country. It's backwards to fight discrimination with different types of discrimination and it's wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present."

Scott critiques the American Jobs Plan as the "most liberal" in history.

"Republicans support everything you think of when you think of infrastructure," Scott tells viewers. "But again - Democrats want a partisan wishlist. They won't even build bridges to build bridges."

He says Biden's plan is a waste of money and a job-killer that would "lower wages of the average American worker".

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office has quickly released a statement praising her party's leader for his speech.

“Tonight,the American people heard President Joe Biden deliver a unifying message ofresilience, resolve and hope," it reads.

Touting "extraordinary progress" and the president's "ambitious, transformative vision", Pelosi calls the moment a once-in-a-century opportunity for the US economy.

“TheDemocratic Congress looks forward to working with the Biden-HarrisAdministration to enact this historic vision for lower healthcare costs, forbigger paychecks, for cleaner government, For The People,” it ends.

Karishma Vaswani
Asia business correspondent

This was a speech to show the world that America is back - and here to stay - in President Biden’s words.

It was also a reminder to strategic competitors like China that the US won’t sit back and let Beijing advance economically or in the key future industries of technology and artificial intelligence.

Biden talked about China and Chinese President Xi at least four times during his speech, highlighting the importance of this relationship.

He referenced how much time he has spent with the Chinese leader - explaining how President Xi is “deadly earnest” about becoming the most consequential nation in the world.

Biden said he doesn’t want a conflict with the world’s second largest economy but that the US will stand up for its fundamental trade rights, and fight back against the theft of intellectual property, and subsidies to state owned enterprises.

These are consistently the complaints the US has had about the way China and Chinese companies operate, which it says threatens the livelihoods of American workers.

He also talked about the need for more investment in American research and development, which has fallen behind other countries like China in recent decades.

Just ahead of the customary Republican rebuttal, the head of the party's national committee weighed in.

Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called Biden's first 100 days "an unqualified failure", with "attacks on energy workers, a humanitarian crisis at the border and an America-last foreign policy agenda".

She also criticised Democratic attempts to end the filibuster (read our North America reporter's analysis on that here) and "pack" the nation's top court.

"In his inaugural address, Biden called for unity. That was a lie, and our nation is worse off and more divided thanks to Joe Biden."

South Carolina Senator Tim Scott begins the Republican rebuttal to Biden’s speech.

“Our nation is starving for more than empty platitudes,” he says of the president’s remarks.

"Three months in, the actions of the president and his party are pulling us further apart."

Anthony Zurcher
BBC North America reporter

Joe Biden's speech to Congress started as a victory lap and ended with a warning.

He began by touting what has been by all accounts a very successful rollout of vaccinations in the US, paving the way for a return to some semblance of normalcy in the months ahead.

He boasted of hundreds of thousands of new jobs created in his first 100 days and a growing economy. He touted recently passed funding that will help cut child poverty in the US in half.

That was all a set-up, however, for the president’s pitch for more – more spending and more action from Congress.

He proposed a trillion-dollar package of universal pre-kindergarten, two years of free college education, family leave and childcare funding. He called for legislation on gun control, immigration, criminal justice reform and voting rights.

He concluded, however, by turning to the 6 January attack on the US Capitol and the threat posed to democracy by the world’s autocratic nations.

He assured the nation that the US will prevail. His ending, however, seemed designed to create a sense of urgency – one that, perhaps, he can harness to achieve the ambitious agenda he set out on Wednesday night.

"We have stared into an abyss of insurrection and autocracy — of pandemic and pain — and 'We the People' did not flinch," says Biden.

"At the very moment our adversaries were certain we would pull apart and fail. We came together. United. With light and hope, we summoned new strength and new resolve."

So, after about 65 minutes and 6,000-plus words, concludes the president's first speech to Congress.

He's now chatting with lawmakers in the chamber (masks abound, but the social distancing measures that were the rationale for the scaled-down audience have been abandoned).

Reality Check

President Biden has faced criticism over the increased numbers of migrants crossing into the US over its southern border with Mexico.

At a news conference in March, he said: "There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March. It happens every year."

The US Customs and Border Protection agency releases monthly figures on the number of "encounters" at the south-west land border.

The number fluctuates widely - but there is not always a significant increase during the winter months.

In January and February 2021, 78,442 and 100,441 people were encountered - a significant increase on the figures for the same two months in the previous year, which were each just over 36,000.

Since President Biden made the claim, the count for March has been released - 172,331, the highest in recent years.

In 2020, encounters at the border fell slightly between January and March.

In 2018, they remained relatively steady.

Read Reality Check's full fact-check here.

Biden tells lawmakers they should take action on - or at least debate - immigration reform because it would be popular with the American public.

"Let’s end our exhausting war over immigration," he says.

The administration has struggled with the influx of migrants at the US-Mexico border, turning back adults based on Trump-era policies but taking in record numbers of unaccompanied adults.

It has separately proposed a comprehensive immigration overhaul, which would include giving about 11 million undocumented people a legal pathway to US citizenship.

The president also makes mention of his deputy, Kamala Harris, who he has asked to address the root causes of the border crisis.

He says he has "absolute confidence she will get the job done".

"The country supports immigration reform," says Biden. "Congress should act."

Biden's speech draws to a close. He recalls the events of 6 January, when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, and asks lawmakers to prove democracy can rise above such actions.

"Can our democracy deliver on the most pressing needs of our people? Can our democracy overcome the lies, anger, hate and fears that have pulled us apart? America’s adversaries – the autocrats of the world – are betting it can’t," he says.

"They believe we are too full of anger and division and rage. They look at the images of the mob that assaulted this Capitol as proof that the sun is setting on American democracy.

"They are wrong. And we have to prove them wrong. We have to prove democracy still works."

Tara McKelvey
BBC News, Washington

Biden said last year that, if elected, he’d address the issue of police brutality, with a national commission on policing, and “real action”.

Weeks passed, and no action. Then, the verdict in Derek Chauvin’s trial focused the nation’s attention on police violence, once again.

In terms of action, the president is calling for legislation in his speech, rather than a national commission on policing.

Yet it remains unclear whether he has enough political power to usher in new laws on policing, or bring about the broad changes that he’d once promised.

Biden says: "We won’t ignore what our own intelligence agencies have determined – the most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today is from white supremacist terrorism."

"We have all seen the knee of injustice on the neck of Black America," he continues, referring to George Floyd's murder.

On police he says: "Most men and women in uniform wear their badge and serve their communities honorably."

But he says work must be done "to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the people they serve".

"To root out systemic racism in our criminal justice system."