Biden hits the road to sell sweeping economic proposals after prime-time speech
President Joe Biden hit the road on Thursday, traveling to Georgia to promote his sweeping economic proposals the day after making the case for the massive new government programs in his first address to a joint session of Congress.
The President and first lady will participate in a drive-in rally in Duluth, Georgia, on Thursday to highlight Biden’s accomplishments in his first 100 days in office and make the case for his next legislative push, which is centered around infrastructure and the care-giving economy.
The trip is part of what White House officials are calling the “Getting America Back on Track” tour and comes as the White House pushes a roughly $2 trillion infrastructure and jobs plan and a $1.8 trillion plan for children and families.
The first stop on the President and first lady’s Georgia trip will be to Plains to visit former President Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter. The Carters were unable to attend Biden’s inauguration, and this will be the first time Biden meets with Carter since becoming president.
The rally in Duluth later Thursday evening will come 100 days after Inauguration Day and takes place in the state that gave Democrats control of the Senate and allowed Biden’s legislative priorities to become reality. Democrats won two runoff elections in January that flipped control of the chamber. Biden was also the first Democrat to win the presidential election in Georgia in decades.
Biden laid out the second component of his roughly $4 trillion plan to help the nation’s economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday night before Congress. The American Families Plan is a large-scale investment in education, child care and paid family leave.
The proposal would also extend or make permanent enhancements to several key tax credits that were in the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion Covid-19 rescue bill, which Biden signed into law last month.
The President has also unveiled a roughly $2 trillion plan — the American Jobs Plan — to heavily invest in the nation’s crumbling infrastructure, create jobs and shift the country to greener energy over the next eight years.
It is unclear whether lawmakers will consider Biden’s two plans together or separately. It is also unclear whether Democrats will try to pass the legislation the same way they did with Biden’s Covid-19 relief bill, which had no Republican support.
Biden has said he is willing to listen to ideas on the proposals and negotiate on how to pay for them. In two weeks, Biden will host House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, along with their Republican counterparts — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy — at the White House to discuss the proposals. It will be Biden’s first meeting with the bipartisan congressional leadership since taking office.
The President has already hosted several lawmakers from both sides of the aisle at the White House to discuss infrastructure.
Biden was scheduled to headline a political event in Georgia last month touting his Covid-19 relief bill but the event was postponed following a series of shootings in the Atlanta area that killed eight people, including six Asian women. The President and vice president instead met with Asian American leaders in the area and visited the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
