President Joe Biden will tout his economic agenda in remarks Wednesday as he campaigns for a second term amid low poll numbers about his job performance and the direction of the country.
Biden will travel to Chicago to deliver his speech outlining his economic policies, which aim to build the economy «from the middle out and from the bottom up,» the White House said.
The White House said in a statement that the administration faced an «immediate public health and economic crisis» due to the Covid pandemic, higher unemployment rates, supply chain shortages and small businesses struggling to stay open.
The president’s plan, which the White House dubbed «Bidenomics,» aims to «move beyond» «seepage» economic theory that he says disproportionately benefits large, wealthy corporations through tax cuts while that reduces investment in priorities such as infrastructure and education and does not protect competition in the market.
Central aspects of “Bidenomics” include targeted public investments to attract more private sector investment in sectors that are critical to the country’s long-term national security and economic interests. That includes investments in infrastructure, semiconductors, clean energy, and climate security. The White House cited the bipartisan Infrastructure Act the president signed in 2021, billions in private investment commitments since Biden took office, an increase in inflation-adjusted manufacturing construction spending and growth in the US workforce. clean energy last year.
The administration also pursues policies «designed to promote and empower workers,» pointing to historically low unemployment rates, including for women, monarchies and people with disabilities. And he’s touting his investments in apprenticeships and career technical education programs, support for unions, and promotion of free universal preschool and community college.
The plan supports «healthy competition in all sectors,» the White House said, arguing that greater competition translates into lower costs for consumers and higher wages for workers.
The White House also criticized congressional Republicans for an economic approach that the administration said would «hurt working families.»
“President Biden believes in a fundamentally different approach,” the statement said. “Under Bidenomics, he has shown that we can make smart investments in the American people while reducing the deficit by ensuring that the rich and large corporations pay their fair share in taxes, closing wasteful tax loopholes, and cutting wasteful spending on special interests.”
In an interview with NBC News on Tuesday, Lael Brainard, director of the National Economic Council, said Biden’s own middle-class roots, more than any economic theory, drove the policy.
“The president really thinks about a family sitting around the kitchen table at the end of the week and wondering if they have room to breathe and he often refers to his own experience,” Brained said. “His own experience of him in cities where a manufacturing plant might have closed, where instead of bringing more investment to that city, tax cuts for big corporations didn’t actually preserve jobs.”
TO recent NBC News poll found that only 20% of Americans think the country is headed in the right direction, while 74% think it’s headed the wrong way.
Pressed on how the president can make the case that «Bidenomics» is working despite his low poll numbers, Brainard acknowledged that there has been «a lot of uncertainty among consumers» in recent years, but that Americans are beginning to see positive developments. In the economy.
“Most American families experienced a lot of fundamental uncertainty and hardship during the pandemic. Then we saw an increase in energy prices because of Putin’s war,» Brainard said. “So there has been a lot of economic uncertainty. But if you look at the data that came out today, consumer confidence it has actually increased to a level that we have not seen since January 2022, before the invasion and the increase in the price of oil.”
“So it is an economic reality that 13 million jobs created, unemployment below 4% for the longest stretch and 50 years is positive… . So people are starting to feel those good developments and when they talk about their own personal financial circumstances, you can see it,” he continued.