A key plank of the agenda is hiring and training 14,000 new school-based mental health workers to combat gun violence and substance abuse.

“We’re suffering from one of the largest crises in youth mental health of our time coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Gregory Jackson Jr., also deputy director for the Office of Gun Violence Prevention, said. “Youth are in crisis, and when they have a firearm or access to a firearm, that’s a recipe for disaster.”

Wilcox added that the White House is also looking to reduce the inflow of illicit drugs and reduce access to firearms among those determined to have mental health issues.

Junk fees

President Biden is also likely to officially announce what the White House is calling a “new strike force” to crack down on what they say is unfair and illegal pricing. This includes so-called “junk fees” which cost consumers an estimated $90 billion each year.

Kirabo Jackson, who sits on the president’s Economic Policy Council, includes “hidden fees” in those junk fees. For example, the price posted on a shopping and travel website is not the final price as additional fees are added during the process. Jackson says that consumers end up spending more than they would have but these fees also have negative economic effects because companies — especially small businesses — find it harder to compete on price.

“Getting rid of those junk fees is good for the pocketbooks of everyday Americans, but also it makes for a more competitive environment,” he told WHYY News.

Jackson pointed out that companies like AirBnB have already started providing upfront prices because of the White House’s efforts.

Small business opportunities

In January, the president visited Emmaus, Pa., to tout the rise in small business applications. Isabella Casillas Guzman, who heads up the Small Business Administration, says that this focus on small business will be an important part of the president’s address to the joint session of congress.

“We’ve seen our economy perform and outperform other leading global economies in terms of our recovery post COVID,” she told WHYY News. “And that’s been in big part due to the fact that there’s been such a small business boom, there’s 16-and-a-half million new business applications filed around the country and nearly half-a-million in Pennsylvania as well.”

Guzman says that the administration sees small business as a foundation for economically healthy communities, particularly in Black and brown communities.

“Obviously fighting to ensure that we can continue to build up the middle class and that includes our Main Street small businesses, all those mom-and-pop shops which are small, employer-run operations,” Guzman said. “We’re continuing to see that trend with the doubling of the number of households that have businesses in the Black community and Latino community,” she said. “It’s the highest in 10 years.”

Part of the speech, Guzman said, will be to encourage people to build small businesses so the economy can grow from the middle out and bottom up.