24 min listen
What Is the State of the Union Address, and Why Does Congress Host It? (with Matt Glassman)
What Is the State of the Union Address, and Why Does Congress Host It? (with Matt Glassman)
ratings:
Length:
22 minutes
Released:
Jan 8, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
The topic of this episode is, What is the State of the Union Address, and Why Does Congress Host It?Once per year, the President of the United States comes to the U.S. Capitol to deliver a speech known as the State of the Union Address. Usually this happens in late January or early February, but it has occurred as late as March 1.Both members of the House of Representatives and Senators assemble for this speech, along with nearly all members of the president’s cabinet. Justices of the Supreme Court also are there, as are some other individuals. In modern times it has become quite a spectacle—with television cameras beaming the event to millions of homes.To discuss this grand affair, I have with me Matt Glassman. He is a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute, where he studies Congress. Prior to joining the Institute, Matt worked with me at the Congressional Research Service for ten years. There he wrote about congressional operations, separation of powers, appropriations, judicial administration, agency design, and congressional history.Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution and few Americans think well of it, but Congress is essential to our republic. It’s a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be, and that is why we are here to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I’m your host, Kevin Kosar, and I’m a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C.Matt, welcome to the podcast.Matt Glassman:Thanks for having me.Kevin Kosar:Let’s start with the why. Why does Congress host a state of the union address? Does the U.S. Constitution require it?Matt Glassman:The Constitution doesn't require, per se, the State of the Union Address as we know it now, but Article 2, Section 3 does sort of contemplate the idea of a State of the Union message. It says the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”So this idea of the president reporting back to Congress on what's going on in the administration and what he would like to see happen in the legislature is contemplated in the Constitution. So, yes, it is there. It's not required to happen every year; it says from time to time. That's been interpreted as annually, but we don't have a State of the Union message every year.Sometimes presidents don't do it in their last year in office. Sometimes presidents don't do it right after they're inaugurated—they just deliver a different message to Congress. But the idea is rooted in the Constitution and in Anglo-American tradition. It was very traditional for the monarchy to go speak to Parliament as it opened in English history as well.Kevin Kosar:So it's discretionary, which means Congress could—if it chooses—refuse to hold a State of the Union address. One could imagine— in these high partisanship times—a House with a Democratic majority that might have refused to allow President Trump
Released:
Jan 8, 2024
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (49)
What is the filibuster and does it have a future? (with Molly Reynolds) by Understanding Congress