2023 State of the Union address: What to expect

Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman joins the Live show to discuss the expectations for President Biden's 2023 State of the Union address.

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RACHELLE AKUFFO: President Biden will address the United States tonight at 9:00 PM Eastern. And he's expected to say the Union is strong, but will his address move the needle on public opinion and get to the matters important to the average American? Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman has insight on what we can expect later tonight. Rick?

RICK NEWMAN: Oh, hey, Rachelle. Well, we know President Biden is going to do more of what he's been doing lately, which is taking credit for what's good in the economy. That would be the labor market-- incredibly strong, especially with that job report we just saw for January. 517,000 new jobs. I'm sure we're going to be hearing a lot about that. He's going to talk about inflation coming down.

And then he's going to be touting a bunch of things that are sort of small ball, really. I mean, he's going to be talking about doing something about what they call junk fees at the White House. These are add-on fees to things like concert tickets and travel and things like that. There's going to be a lot of emphasis on health care. Biden's going to talk about new efforts to fight cancer, to deal with fentanyl and opioid overdoses, a new initiative on mental health.

And then the rest of it we'll have to see. I mean, these speeches are typically laundry lists of things presidents want to get done. We do know that there's very little chance that Congress will actually pass any of this stuff Biden wants. He is going to talk about bipartisanship and the bipartisan bills he has been able to get passed during the last two years. But that is not likely to happen during the next two years since Republicans control the House.

And most Americans won't watch and they may hear a little bit about it tomorrow, but it's not going to change anything material about Biden's public image, which is relatively weak.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: And I mean, Rick, to really figure out what people care about as well, Yahoo Finance conducted a poll. Inflation was the runaway number one issue. We know that Paul Schatz of Heritage Capital said for him, for his clients, it was topic one, two, and three. But also we're seeing international relations, as we saw all this back and forth over China's balloon and alleged spying.

But then also immigration actually beat health care in terms of the issues that they are expecting, or at least hoping that President Biden talks about. But to see inflation so far ahead of everything else is not really a surprise here.

RICK NEWMAN: So I think those poll results track very closely with what we're seeing in different types of data, such as consumer confidence surveys. I mean, so we have an unemployment rate that is almost as low as it has ever been. I mean, it's at a 50-year low. And that ought to be good news.

I mean, Americans have the best job security many working people have ever had in their lives. And pay has been going up by more than usual. And yet, we find that people are in a recessionary mood. Many people say the economy stinks.

And you have to say, what's the disconnect here? And I think inflation explains a lot of it. I mean, we forgot how pernicious inflation can be because we haven't had meaningful inflation in almost 40 years until 2021. So now we have it. And even though inflation is coming down, it's down to about 6.5% from a high of 9%, it is still bumming people out.

And I don't know if this is just sort of a shock effect that has not worn off yet, or if people still are going to the grocery store and the department store and saying, how did prices get so high? I mean, we know that price increases in things people don't really spend that much money on can have this outsized effect on the way they think about the economy. Eggs are the latest thing.

I mean, we've got 50% or 60% egg inflation. Most people spend very little on eggs. And yet, they are really bummed out about the whole country because the price of eggs is so high. So consumer psyches are a weird thing. And politicians like President Biden have to deal with that.

So Biden is going to try to figure out ways to convince people that things are better. I'm not sure he's going to do it, but he's going to try.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: That's a tough sell because people might not be buying a new car every week, but they're certainly buying the groceries every week. And that does tend to hit home in a very visceral way for people. We'll be keeping an eye on that. Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman, thanks so much.

RICK NEWMAN: See ya.