Presidents Addressing Joint Sessions of Congress
Obama's 2009 Health Care Speech Among Rare Bicameral Addresses
Sep 9, 2009
On September 9, 2009, President Barack Obama addressed a joint session of Congress, attended by members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Obama outlined his legislative goals for health care reform.
To understand what the risks and benefits that forum held for Obama, some questions need to be answered. How unusual is it for both legislative chambers of the United States government to meet? How often do they do so to hear an address by a sitting President? And what are the typical subjects of those addresses?
What is a Joint Session of Congress?
According to the Office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives, a joint session of Congress occurs upon the adoption, by both the House and Senate, of a concurrent resolution. It is more formal than ajoint meeting, which occurs when the both legislative houses adopt a unanimous consent agreement to recess and meet. In the last 200 years, joint sessions have almost always been held in the Hall of the House.
The most common joint sessions of Congress are called for the President's State of the Union Address (or, as it was called until the late 1940s, his Annual Message). These messages to Congress, mandated by the Constitution, were submitted as written reports throughout the nineteenth century. It was Woodrow Wilson, in 1913, who re-instituted the tradition of the President delivering an annual speech to Congress.
Presidents Now Address Congress After Inauguration
In recent years, newly-inaugurated presidents have chosen to address joint sessions of Congress. Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all gave such speeches in the weeks after they first took office.
While these addresses are not technically State of the Union speeches, they signal a new President's legislative agenda in the same way. Not coincidentally, no president since Jimmy Carter has delivered a State of the Union address for the year he left office, even though it was his option to do so.
Presidents Have Addressed Joint Sessions to Urge War
Presidents have also made extraordinary speeches to joint sessions of Congress in the wake of some crisis or emergency, often at the start of a war. For instance, President Franklin Roosevelt addressed a joint session of Congress on December 8, 1941, urging a declaration of war on Japan in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack.
George H. W. Bush addressed a joint session of Congress on September 11, 1990, before the Persian Gulf War, and again on March 6, 1991, after the war's conclusion. His son, George W. Bush, also addressed Congress in a joint session on September 20, 2001, anticipating the invasion of Afghanistan and his broader War on Terror.
Joint sessions of Congress have been convened to hear Presidents speak on other weighty matters. John F. Kennedy addressed Congress on May 21, 1961, pledging to land Americans on the moon. On November 27, 1963, five days after Kennedy was assassinated, Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session as the new President, pledging to continue Kennedy's agenda.
Obama's Joint Session Address in Context
Presidential addresses to joint session of Congress are rare, and those that aren't State of the Union speeches are rarer still. By making his appeal for health care reform in this forum, Barack Obama has indicated that decisive action on this issue is as necessary as action was after Pearl Harbor or 9/11.
Yet Obama's speech is closer in policy terms to President Kennedy's promise to win the space race. Whether the 2009 address to Congress is remembered as well as that of 1961 (and not forgotten like Clinton's similar 1993 health care address) depends less on Obama's rhetorical skills, and more on the ultimate results.
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