By Grace Miron Dominguez
Stratford High School
The State of the Union address this year was very eventful. President Biden delivered the annual speech containing his plans for the rest of his term, and he used this opportunity to combat the negative comments from Republicans regarding the job he’s done so far. He covered many topics like gun control (banning assault style weapons), reducing the price of life saving medication such as insulin, and improving America’s infrastructure. I don’t fully understand how these topics affect people my age yet, but as I hear our government address these things more, I think I´ll begin to figure it out.
I noticed that throughout the address, there were multiple outbursts from the Republican side of the chamber, specifically when President Biden started talking about how some Republican members want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. Ater he said this, there were many comments directed towards the President including Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene calling him a liar. However I think President Biden handled these comments very well. He made it clear that if any bill calling for Medicare and Social Security to sunset appeared on his desk, he would VETO it immediately. This really outlined how confident he is to use his power to make effective change in Congress and use his power to do what he thinks is the best for the country.
I personally think that there is nothing about our lives that isn’t somewhat affected by the government. They have the ability to decide how much we get paid, where we can live, if we can get a job, and even who we can marry. In some way, everything in our lives is affected by the government’s decisions.
However, we still have the ability to decide what kind of people we want to be.
Regardless of what laws are passed, the American people can still have dreams and reach for them. No one, not even the government can take that away. Seeing this as a freshman, it makes me nervous to think about the future of our country when I hear talks of the government trying to control our lives even more. Things such as controlling who we can marry is just so hard to think about because we can’t control who we love, so for the government to tell us if we can spend the rest of our lives with that person or not just doesn’t seem right.
I hope that when the people in power think about how their decisions affect everyone’s life, they realize that continuing to exert their power over the country won´t make people love them anymore. And hopefully they come to this realization soon because if not, who knows what will happen from here.
