Episode 4: The Rebuttal Speech

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra delivered the 2019 rebuttal speech in Spanish (photo by Kitty Felde)

After the President delivers his State of the Union speech to Congress, there is the rebuttal speech.

So what is the rebuttal speech?

In the podcast, Claudia, a longtime House staffer, tells Fina, “The reason for the rebuttal speech is to present different ideas, from our party’s point of view.”

The rebuttal speech traces its origins to 1965 when then-President Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat, scheduled his State of the Union address for primetime television. Usually, Presidents gave the speech during the workday when few were watching. According to the Senate Historian, LBJ’s speech became a major TV event, promoted by the networks, with a possible audience three times the size of earlier SOTU speeches.

The Senate Minority Leader at the time was Republican Everett Dirksen who knew a thing or two about television. He pushed for equal time and in 1965, Dirksen and Congressman Gerald Ford taped a 30-minute rebuttal to the State of the Union. The TV networks aired the speech five days after the SOTU, but the public reaction was positive.

A Spanish language rebuttal became a tradition in 2004 when then-Governor Bill Richardson, a Democrat from New Mexico, delivered a response to Republican President George W. Bush.

Last year, however, the GOP declined to deliver a rebuttal in Spanish. Instead, news outlets were provided a translation of the rebuttal delivered by Republican Senator Tim Scott.

Here’s the fiction inspired by the facts:

In Episode 4 of The Fina Mendoza Mysteries, Papa is invited to deliver that rebuttal…in Spanish.