Oklahoma Delegation Reflects On First Anniversary Of President Biden’s Inauguration

One year into the presidency of Joe Biden, a Democratic former Vice President and long-time Senator from Delaware, Republican members of the Oklahoma congressional delegation said the nation is doing worse than when Biden took office.  

President Biden marked the first anniversary of his inauguration by touting his accomplishments at a news conference Wednesday, saying it was a year of challenges but also a year of “enormous progress.”

“We went from two million people being vaccinated at the moment I was sworn in to 210 million Americans being fully vaccinated today,” Biden stated. “We created six million new jobs, more jobs in one year than anytime before.”

Most Republicans — and a majority of Americans — view the president’s performance less favorably. According to an Associated Press poll conducted last week, 43 percent of respondents said they somewhat or strongly approve of the way Biden is handling his job as president, compared to 56 percent who said they somewhat or strongly disapprove. At the same time, a Monmouth University poll shows just 29 percent of those polled feel the nation is headed in the right direction.

“It’s been a tough year for both the president and the Democrat majority in the House and Senate,” Oklahoma Rep. Frank Lucas (R-OK3) said in an interview Wednesday.

Aside from a partisan COVID relief package approved very early in Biden’s presidency, Rep. Lucas said, “They haven’t passed anything else that I can think of.”

Others in the delegation expressed similarly negative sentiments, pointing to domestic policies that they said have been instrumental in push inflation to its highest rate in almost 40 years and to international failings, such as the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

"With what happened in Afghanistan, what’s happening on the [southern] border, seven percent inflation, their communication problems with what to do on COVID, the vaccine mandates," Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said Thursday. “People are overwhelmed and frustrated because they can’t figure out where our government’s going."

“I look at foreign policy. I look at domestic policy. I look at COVID,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK4) said. “And I don’t see things as better than they were when the president came into office. I see them as worse.”