The Speaker of the House is being pushed to disinvite the President from giving the State of the Union before a joint session of Congress, because the President hasn't submitted a budget for the next fiscal year (FY2025, which starts 10/1/2024).
This is rich, because the House has failed for five months (and counting) to pass a budget for the current fiscal year (FY2024, which ends 9/30/2024), and House Republicans show no real interest in doing so. Indeed, the invitation was for early March, instead of late January which is the typical timeframe for the speech. The delay was to be used by the House to finalize a budget for the rest of the year. It’s worked out pretty much as I, for one, expected: there’s still no FY24 budget. It was recently reported that there’s an agreement to extend some government funding for one (one!) week, the remainder for 2 weeks. I’ve lost track of how many short-term funding bills have been needed this fiscal year because House Republicans won’t do their job, and I have no hope that things will improve any time before the next Congress is sworn in, in January 2025. And maybe not then, either.
Here’s an idea: the Constitution (Art II, sec. 3) says only that "[The President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union..." For 112 years, from Jefferson to Taft, presidents simply submitted a letter to Congress rather than giving a speech before a joint session. Biden could do the something similar: televise the SOTU from the Oval Office, then satisfy the requirement by sending the text of his speech to Congress. He should introduce the speech by explaining exactly WHY he wasn't doing it before a joint session, the way it’s been done since before WWI, specifically calling out the Republicans’ feckless approach to funding the very government they work for.