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Live updates Biden faces divided Congress in State of the Union address

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Biden is set to deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night at 9 p.m. ET.
President Biden, two years into his term and facing a Republican-led House for the first time, will deliver his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night. The speech, scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. Eastern, comes amid a standoff with House Republicans over raising the debt limit, softening inflation, the lowest unemployment rate in decades, rising tensions with China and an ongoing war in Ukraine waged by Russia. The address could also offer a preview of what a reelection bid next year by Biden, 80, might sound like.
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President Biden will vow to strengthen rules on mental health parity as part of a long-standing effort to force insurance companies to cover behavioral health services on a par with medical services to help a nation reeling from increased rates of depression, substance abuse and anxiety.
The 2008 Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act has required group- and self-insured health plans that cover more than 50 workers to provide behavioral health benefits on the same level as services that consumers receive for medical and surgical care.
In his State of the Union speech, President Biden will stress his goals to address the opioid epidemic, announcing increased screening for fentanyl along the U.S.-Mexico border and expanded access to treatment.
After calling for harm-reduction solutions in his last speech to Congress, this year Biden will talk about efforts to make the overdose-reversing drug naloxone more available in the spring, ensure every jail and prison offers medication-assisted treatment by summer and provide large-scale scanners for fentanyl at points of entry along the border by 2026. The announcements come as Republicans have accused Democrats of allowing the synthetic opioid fentanyl that has ravaged American communities to get in through “open borders.”
President Biden, who will deliver his first State of the Union with Republicans in control of the House, plans to include a renewed “unity agenda” in his speech Tuesday night.
He will offer initiatives aimed at ending cancer, supporting veterans, enhancing mental health coverage and addressing the opioid epidemic, White House officials told reporters during a call Tuesday morning previewing that aspect of the speech.
Biden included a “unity agenda” in last year’s speech as well, including legislation to help veterans exposed to toxic burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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