Reynolds to focus on inflation, schools in response to Biden

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) will focus on inflation and schools in her response to President Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday.

According to advanced excerpts provided by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Reynolds will call inflation an “everybody problem.”

“The Biden Administration believes inflation is ‘a high-class problem.’ I can tell you it’s an everybody problem,” Reynolds will say, appearing to swipe at White House chief of staff Ron Klain for retweeting a tweet in October that called inflation and other economic issues “high class problems.”

“I saw moms’ and dads’ paychecks buy them less and less. I watched working people choosing which essentials to take home and which ones to leave behind at the register. And now President Biden’s decisions have a whole new generation feeling that same pain,” the governor will add.

The Iowa Republican will also discuss keeping schools open and empowering parents, two issues that have become rallying cries among conservatives during the pandemic. Many on the right have railed against mask mandates in school, arguing that parents should decide whether or not their children wear masks in classrooms.

She will tout that the Hawkeye State was “the first state in the nation to require that schools open their doors.”

The GOP response will also touch on foreign policy, according to the advance excerpts from McConnell’s office.

“Instead of moving America forward, it feels like President Biden and his party have sent us back in time to the late ‘70s and early ‘80s,” Reynolds plans to say. “When runaway inflation was hammering families, a violent crime wave was crashing on our cities, and the Soviet army was trying to redraw the world map.”

On Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Reynolds will call on Americans to “stand united in solidarity with the brave people of Ukraine as they courageously defend their country against Putin’s tyranny.”

The speech comes on the sixth day of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, which has killed several civilians.

Reynolds is also planning to knock Biden for the U.S.’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan in August, calling the departure “disastrous.”

“The disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal did more than cost American lives; it betrayed our allies and emboldened our enemies,” the governor will say.

Reynolds, who has served as governor since 2017, will deliver the Republican response on national television after Biden’s address, which is scheduled to start shortly after 9 p.m. Eastern time. She is the first woman to be elected chief of the Hawkeye State.

In a statement last week, the governor also said that she will share “an alternative” to Biden’s governing during her speech.

“The Biden Administration is governing from the far-left, ignoring the problems of working-class Americans while pushing an agenda that stifles free speech, free thought, and economic freedom. The American people have had enough, but there is an alternative and that’s what I look forward to sharing on Tuesday evening,” Reynolds said.