US President Joe Biden will face Republicans who question his legitimacy and an audience worried about where the country is headed in his State of the Nation address on Tuesday, which is expected to serve as a model for re-election from 2024, AFP reported.

In his first address to a joint session of Congress since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, Biden is expected to explain how he is trying to turn the economy around after the pandemic, highlight the massive infrastructure and inflation bills passed in 2022 and indicate that the sharp a divided Congress can still pass legislation next year.

“I want to talk to the American people and tell them what the situation is … what I’m looking forward to working on next, what I’ve done,” Biden told reporters on Monday after returning from the Camp David presidential residence. , where he spent the weekend working on the performance.

Biden’s public approval rating rose one percentage point to 41 percent, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that ended Sunday.

This is near the lowest level since his presidency, with 65 percent of Americans saying the country is on the wrong track, down from 58 percent a year earlier.

In his speech, Biden hailed the resilience and strength of the U.S. economy, which saw unemployment fall to a nearly 54-year low in January, while pledging to continue efforts to lower inflation and protect Social Security and other benefits.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said on Tuesday that 2023 should be a year of “substantial decline in inflation,” but strong jobs data meant that rate hikes could continue “for some time.”

According to the White House, Biden will continue to criticize corporations for profiting from the COVID-19 pandemic and consider a list of economic proposals, although many of them are unlikely to pass Congress.

They include a minimum tax on billionaires and a fourfold increase in the tax on buybacks of company shares.

On foreign policy, Biden is expected to cover the U.S. response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the strength of the NATO alliance and tensions between the United States and China, recently highlighted by a Chinese spy bullet shot down by the U.S. military. this week.

The president sees good prospects for continuing bipartisan efforts on his “agenda of unity” to advance cancer research, support veterans and reduce their high suicide rates, expand mental health services across the board and defeat the “opioid and overdose epidemic,” White the house said

Biden’s advisers are describing the speech, which will draw millions of viewers and possibly the president’s biggest television audience this year, as a milestone ahead of the second presidential campaign he is expected to launch in the coming weeks.

Biden turned 80 in November and, if re-elected, would be 82 at the start of his second term, which recent polls show has worried many Democratic voters.