Biden pledges New Deal-like agenda
Democrat wants to use $700 billion from federal purse to spur economy
DUNMORE, Pa. – Democrat Joe Biden turned his campaign against President Donald Trump toward the economy Thursday, introducing a New Deallike economic agenda while drawing a sharp contrast with a billionaire incumbent he said has abandoned workingclass Americans amid cascading crises.
The former vice president presented details of a comprehensive agenda that he touted as the most aggressive government investment in the U.S. economy since World War II. He also accused Trump of ignoring the coronavirus pandemic and the climate crisis while encouraging division amid a national reckoning with systemic racism.
“His failures come with a terrible human cost and a deep economic toll,” Biden said during a 30-minute address at a metal works firm near his childhood home in Scranton, Pennsylvania. “Time and again, working families are paying the price for this administration’s incompetence.”
Biden’s shift to the economy meets Trump on turf the Republican president had seen as his strength before the pandemic severely curtailed consumer activity and drove unemployment to nearGreat Depression levels. Now, Biden and his aides believe the issue gives Democrats avenues to attack Trump on multiple fronts while explaining their own governing vision for the country.
The former vice president began Thursday with proposals intended to reinvigorate the U.S. manufacturing and technology sectors.
Biden called for a four-year, $400 billion increase in government purchasing of U.S.-based goods and services, plus $300 billion in new research and development in U.S. technology concerns. He also proposed tightening “Buy American” laws that are intended to benefit U.S. firms but that government agencies can circumvent. Those moves would create 5 million new jobs, Biden promised.
For now, Biden has not said how he would pay for the proposed new spending for manufacturing and technology. He’s identified repealing GOP tax cuts on corporations and the wealthiest Americans as the source of revenue for some of his proposals for ongoing spending, including his plans to expand health insurance access. But his aides have indicated that he’s willing to use deficit spending for one-time or shortterm investments he sees as stimulus to combat the pandemic recession.
He also emphasized previous pledges to establish a $15-per-hour minimum wage, strengthen workers’ collective bargaining rights and repeal Republican-backed tax breaks for U.S. corporations that move jobs overseas. And his campaign pledged that those investments in domestic markets would come before Biden entered negotiations for any new international trade agreements.
His opening emphasis on manufacturing and labor policy is no coincidence: Biden wants to capitalize on his union ties and win back working-class white voters who fueled Trump’s upset victory four years ago. He noted his middle-class upbringing and alluded to Trump’s childhood as the son of a multimillionaire real estate developer.
Biden will continue in coming weeks with an energy and infrastructure plan and a third package focused on making child care and elder care more affordable and less of an impediment to working-age Americans.
“It’s not sufficient to build back. We have to build back better,” Biden said, promising he would “ensure all Americans are in on the deal.”
Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday was also in Pennsylvania, where he cast Biden as a threat to the economy. Pence touted job gains before the pandemic and said Trump is now leading a “great American comeback.” He said the company where Biden spoke received federal pandemic aid that Trump signed into law.
The Democrat’s agenda carries at least some rhetorical echoes of Trump’s “America First” philosophy, but the former vice president’s aides describe his approach as more coherent. They cast Trump’s imposition of tariffs and uneven trade negotiations as a slapdash isolationism compromised further by tax policies that enrich multinational corporations. The Biden campaign also pointed to an uptick in foreign procurement and continued outsourcing of jobs by U.S.-based corporations during Trump’s presidency.
Republicans have made clear they will attack Biden on trade and the economy, framing him as a tool of the far left on taxes and a willing participant in decades of trade policy that gutted American workers. Trump also has lampooned Biden as “weak on China.”