In the GOP response to the president’s address calling for the country to unify around sweeping new government programs, the South Carolina senator says Mr. Biden and his Democratic party aren’t reaching for common ground.
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WASHINGTON—Sen. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) countered President Biden’s call for the country to unify around sweeping new government programs, saying that the Democratic president and his party aren’t reaching for common ground but are instead “pulling us further and further apart,” particularly on racial issues.
Mr. Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, ticked off a list of differences between his party and the president, from the tax increases that Mr. Biden has proposed to the president’s drive to tack on to an infrastructure package major initiatives to finance programs like elder care. He called Mr. Biden’s plans “a liberal wish list of big government waste.”
But Mr. Scott’s major theme was race, which spans topics including policing, spending and voting that are prompting sharp debate in Congress and the country.
“Nowhere do we need common ground more desperately than in our discussions of race,” Mr. Scott said. “I know firsthand our healing is not finished.”
Mr. Scott, who said he has been called “Uncle Tom” by liberals, suggested Democrats had given cover to insidious forces that sought to define people by the color of their skin in the same way that Americans a century ago—and he gestured to his own skin color—were told that “if they looked a certain way, they were inferior.”
“Today kids are being taught that the color of their skin defines them again, and if they look a certain way they’re an oppressor,” Mr. Scott said. “From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven’t made any progress at all, by doubling down on the divisions we’ve worked so hard to heal.”
Mr. Scott was picked jointly by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) to deliver the Republican response. The assignment frequently goes to public figures with broad national ambitions; Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) delivered the GOP response in 2013 and made a run for the presidency three years later.
Mr. Scott, 55 years old, is being watched to see if he has similar plans.
