President Biden wants American voters to give him another four years in office to “finish the job”—a signal that his second-term agenda would be driven largely by efforts to reach policy goals left undone in his first term.

President Biden’s sprawling $6.4 trillion budget released on Thursday is best viewed as a political messaging exercise. With Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, the proposal was dead even before arrival. But the annual ritual of the president delivering a budget request to Congress was a useful opportunity for Biden to stake out ground in the bitter standoff over next year’s spending levels and the raising of the debt ceiling.

President Joe Biden is set to release his budget proposal for the next fiscal year on Thursday, targeting four key areas as he courts voters ahead of his expected reelection campaign.

Biden is expected to release the long-awaited budget around noon during a visit to Pennsylvania as he unveils some of his top campaign priorities to the critical swing state. The budget release is largely symbolic, as it’s unlikely that Congress will approve the proposal in its current form, but it serves as campaign fodder as Biden teases a reelection bid.

Promises, promises. President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address last year was loaded with them: from Ukraine to infrastructure, to immigration and reproductive rights.

So, how did the president do in fulfilling those pledges? POLITICO sifted through some of last year’s claims to track his progress just before he delivers what’s expected to be another policy-packed speech Tuesday night.

Here’s our report card, using the following scale: success, in progress, needs improvement, fail.

Ukraine

GRADE: SUCCESS

"I'm not going to change direction," President Biden said several times at his post-election news conference.

He was responding to a reporter who noted that 75 percent of voters say the country is headed in the wrong direction: "What in the next two years do you intend to do differently to change people’s opinion of the direction of the country?" the reporter asked.

"Nothing," Biden said, "because they’re just finding out what we’re doing. The more they know about what we’re doing, the more support there is.

WASHINGTON — What started as a $4 trillion effort during President Joe Biden’s first months in office to rebuild America’s public infrastructure and family support systems has ended up a much slimmer, but not unsubstantial, compromise package of inflation-fighting health care, climate change and deficit reduction strategies that appears headed toward quick votes in Congress.

Speculation has risen that the Democrats may have "out-McConnelled" Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell after West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin announced he has agreed to support a major spending bill right after the Senate voted to pass the CHIPS Act on Wednesday.

Democrats are divided over how hard to push President Biden’s agenda in the months remaining until Election Day, uncertain about how much risk to take on at a time when Biden’s approval rating is stuck just above 40 percent. 

BIDEN: NO COURSE CORRECTION. The failures of President Joe Biden's first year in office are obvious to all. Inflation is raging. COVID is raging. Crime is spiking in some big cities. The U.S.-Mexico border is a mess. The American withdrawal from Afghanistan was a mess. And with it all, the president and his party are obsessed, most of all, with passing a voting rules bill that would help ensure their future election by federalizing the voting system along lines favorable to Democrats.