Tag Archives: “Getting America Back on Track” tour

Biden to visit storm-battered Louisiana to tout infrastructure spending

By Jarrett Renshaw

(Reuters) – President Joe Biden on Thursday will visit the Gulf Coast state of Louisiana, which has backed Republicans in U.S. elections for the past two decades, to tout his plans to invest in water and storm projects in cities that have been battered by hurricanes.

Biden, a Democrat, will visit both the decidedly liberal-leaning city of New Orleans, still scarred 15 years after Hurricane Katrina, and deeply conservative Lake Charles, a city of 77,000 with a major refinery and petrochemical plants, which was slammed by Hurricanes Laura and Delta last year.

The visits are the latest stop in the White House’s “Getting America Back on Track Tour,” to promote Biden’s $2.25 trillion infrastructure spending plan and a $1.8 billion education and child-care proposal.

Biden’s push to spend more federal money on schools, roads, job training and other public-facing projects, and tax the wealthiest Americans and companies to pay for it, is popular with members of both parties. But the plans face stiff opposition from Republican lawmakers.

The White House is betting trips like this will build public support for Biden and his spending proposals, even among Republican voters who backed former President Donald Trump, who continues to hold enormous sway over his party.

Biden plans to tour one of New Orleans’ aging facilities that houses water purification equipment and turbines for drainage pumps, which help pump out water during storm events. “Storm-hardening” projects that invest in dams and levies are a potentially popular idea in a Gulf Coast state increasingly threatened with extreme weather that scientists blame on climate change.

Biden is asking Congress for $50 billion to improve the resiliency of infrastructure nationwide, and additional support to help areas recover from disaster.

Congressional Republicans oppose Biden’s proposed $2.25 trillion in infrastructure spending over a decade, saying the higher taxes that would be levied on corporations to fund it would cost jobs and slow the economy.

Some Republicans have offered a far smaller package, $568 billion, focused on roads, bridges, broadband access and drinking water improvements. However, much of that reflects money that the federal government is already expected to spend for that infrastructure.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell predicted last week that Biden’s infrastructure and jobs plan will not get support from Republican lawmakers.

“I’m going to fight them every step of the way, because I think this is the wrong prescription for America,” McConnell said in an event in his home state of Kentucky last month. In the closely divided Senate, Biden would need every Democratic vote if no Republicans support the bill.

Biden brushed off the comment on Wednesday when asked about it by reporters at the White House. He recalled that McConnell said something similar when former President Barack Obama was in office, but yet “I was able to get a lot done with him.”

(Reporting by Jarrett Renshaw; Editing by Heather Timmons and Leslie Adler)

Biden promotes $4 trillion plans in visit to Virginia schools

By Jeff Mason

YORKTOWN, VA. (Reuters) -President Joe Biden traveled to coastal Virginia on Monday to promote how his proposals to spend $4 trillion for infrastructure and families will help the U.S. education system.

Biden, joined by his wife, Jill Biden, a community college professor, bantered with a class of 5th-grade students at an elementary school in Yorktown. The students had shields in front of their desks as a guard against the virus.

The president asked them what they wanted to do when they grow up and was given an array of examples, including a fashion designer, a chef and a hairstylist.

“You’re very impressive,” Biden told them.

Later, he was to deliver remarks at Tidewater Community College in Norfolk, Virginia.

The travel is part of Biden’s “Getting America Back on Track” tour to promote his $2 trillion infrastructure plan and his $1.8 trillion “American Families Plan.”

Biden’s plan includes $1 trillion in spending on education and childcare over 10 years and $800 billion in tax credits aimed at middle- and low-income families.

It also includes $200 billion for free, universal preschool and $109 billion for free community college regardless of income for two years, the White House said.

Biden will travel to Lake Charles and New Orleans, Louisiana, on Thursday. Vice President Kamala Harris heads to Milwaukee on Tuesday.

Biden has vowed to work with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers in a search for a bipartisan agreement. However, whether he will be able to persuade the opposition party to join in a plan that will raise taxes on the wealthy is far from clear.

He is to meet with top Democratic and Republican lawmakers at the White House on May 12 to try to find common ground.

Congress is polarized and Democrats hold only narrow majorities in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.

Biden had promised throughout the 2020 presidential campaign to work with Republicans, but his major legislative achievement, a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief plan, passed without a Republican vote.

Republicans in Congress already have their eyes on making gains in the midterm congressional elections in 2022, and are aligning a divided party around opposing Biden.

(Reporting By Jeff Mason; writing by Steve Holland; editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Jonathan Oatis)