Georgia fine and dandy, says Joe

WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden marked his 100th day in office with a trip to the crucial electoral state of Georgia to promote his multi-trillion-dollar spending plans that he says will transform the US.

Addressing a drive-in rally at a Duluth car park, Mr Biden praised the state for beating the odds at the November election and for sending two Democrats — Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff — to the Senate in January run-off polls.

Those two upset wins secured the narrowest of congressional majorities for Mr Biden, allowing him to push through a $US1.9 trillion ($2.4 trillion) stimulus package soon after taking office and begin planning for another $US4bn in spending on infrastructure, social safety nets and education.

“Your vote changed the world,” Mr Biden told the crowd.

In the brief, upbeat speech, he echoed many of his themes from a major address on Wednesday to Congress in which he declared the US is “ready for take-off” after the success of a COVID vaccination program.

“I’ve never been more optimistic about America — America is on the move again,” he said in Georgia.

Mr Biden ran through his three mega-spending programs and said that getting them passed by Congress would result in “millions of good-paying jobs”.

“Wall Street didn’t build this country, you did,” he said. “The middle class did, and the unions built the middle class.”

Arguing for higher taxation of top earners to offset the cost of his latest spending package, Mr Biden said “it’s about time the very wealthy and corporations started paying their fair share”. Earlier, the 78-year-old President visited former president and longtime Democratic ally Jimmy Carter, who is 96.