Party pooper: AOC says Biden’s State of the Union ‘left a little bit to be desired’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said President Biden’s State of the Union speech Tuesday “left a little bit to be desired” because it didn’t go far enough to push progressive policies on student loan debt, immigration and energy policy.

The socialist “Squad” leader picked apart her own party’s commander-in-chief shortly after his speech ended — eclipsing the more widely anticipated but ultimately less critical “rebuttal” to Biden from leftist ally Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).

“The piece on immigration was really just glossed over and we have over 10 — you know, anywhere between 10 to 13 million immigrants in this country that feel desperate for a path to citizenship,” Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said on MSNBC.

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“We heard, you know, some speaking to Dreamers but Dreamers want their families to be able to stay. They don’t want to be separated from their parents either,” she continued.

“So I think there’s some themes that left a little bit to be desired for key constituencies in the Democratic base, but the president’s goal was very clear on really projecting a theme of unity and I think he stuck to that.”

The 32-year-old democratic socialist from New York City proceeded to fault Biden for releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine while giving short shrift to renewable energy.

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The congresswoman said it “definitely was a lost opportunity” for Biden.

“Russia is very, very much reliant on the rest of the world buying its oil. We are releasing oil reserves right now in order to ease that, but we shouldn’t be relying on fossil fuels to begin with and that would really solve a lot of these issues,” she said.

“I think that there’s a lot more to be desired there. [Electric vehicles], while they are great, they are not the main form of transit for millions of people who live in urban or urban-adjacent areas in the United States. And so we need to hear more about our transition to clean energy beyond just, you know, weatherizing our windows, which is incredibly important, and EVs. But we really need to hear more, I think, about mass transit, trains, high-speed rail and renewable energy.”

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Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of the Bronx and Queens, went on to urge Biden to grant Temporary Protected Status to Ukrainian citizens living in the US. The status would allow them to legally remain in the US.

Fellow “Squad” members gave mixed reviews to certain Biden lines. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), for example, was conspicuously seated when nearly all other members of Congress gave Biden a standing ovation for denouncing calls to defund the police.

By contrast, Tlaib’s more formal response to Biden, on behalf of the leftist Working Families Party, was largely decontextualized from the president’s remarks after she received criticism from fellow Democrats.

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Tlaib’s decision to issue a response to Biden was “like keying your own car and slashing your own tires,” said Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) earlier in the day.

The Michigan congresswoman gave very little pushback to Biden and instead praised him while calling on her colleagues to get behind the proposed social initiatives in his roughly $2 trillion Build Back Better Act, which was effectively killed in December by centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) opposing it in the evenly divided Senate.

“With the majority of the Build Back Better agenda stalled, Mr. President, our work is unfinished. But we are ready to jumpstart our work again,” Tlaib said. “We still have time to lower costs for working families and preserve a livable planet for our grandchildren. But we must act now.”

In glimmers of criticism, Tlaib called on Biden to cancel federal student loan debt, which he says he lacks the power to do, and ban federal permits for new fossil fuel drilling, which Biden is fighting in court to do. She also called on the president to break up “pharmaceutical monopolies” to reduce drug costs.

Tlaib’s response received little play on cable news channels because it coincided with the live broadcast of the Republican rebuttal presented by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.