President Biden keeps the Attention on Infrastructure, Again Signaling a Willingness to Make a Deal

Accompanied by Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden spoke to the American People again about the urgent need to revitalize and modernize the nation's infrastructure by passing the American Jobs Plan.

During his remarks, he took issue with Republicans saying that components of his bill were not infrastructure.

Biden countered that reactionary talking point by asking if:

• Children, families, and teachers, drinking water from lead pipes or staying in schools with asbestos in them would not consider those repairs infrastructure.
• Farmers in the midwest looking to devise tools to combat flooding would not consider that infrastructure.
• Firefighters in the west seeking ways to stem another season of wildfires would not consider those ways to modernize infrastructure.
• The Elderly and disabled who depend on human care do not think that is not part of their personal infrastructure.

The President also called the Republican emphasis on just sticking to roads, bridges, and highway infrastructure fixes "irrational," citing the historical examples of trains and highways to demonstrate that those infrastructure areas were once considered revolutionary like expanding broadband to all areas and building electric charging stations for electric vehicles are today.

Mr. Biden also repeated that revitalizing and modernizing infrastructure was a:

• Fight for the future of the country.
• Battle to see that Democracy can still accomplish great things.
• Competition with other nations like autocratic China to lead the world in science, research, and innovation.
• Job engine for millions of people.
• Way to lift many lower and middle-class people to greater prosperity.
• Way to bring the nation into the Twenty-First Century and beyond.

Saying "where's the outrage there" and "damn it, maybe it's because I come from a middle-class neighborhood, I'm sick and tired of ordinary people being fleeced,"  he also decried Republican talking points about paying for the American Jobs Plan through various tax increases and enforcement, blasting them for passing the Trump Tax Cut in 2017 that was not paid for and did nothing for the American People except helping the top one percent.

At the end of his remarks and in comments to reporters, the President called for bipartisanship on infrastructure said he is willing to discuss alternative ideas and ways to pay for the legislation (as long as no one who making below $400,000 is affected)  in good faith negotiations.

When asked if he would fail at bipartisanship if no Republicans come on board, Mr. Biden noted less than flashy bipartisan bills like on computer chips were being worked on. He also said:

"Look what I said was I would try to work with my friends on the other side...but the last plan I laid out what was available what I was suggesting and how I'd deal with it and a bipartisan group came to see me and then the Republican group came to see me. And they started off at $600 billion and that was it. If they came forward with a plan that did the bulk of it was a billion (he meant trillion) three or four, two or three, that allowed me to have pieces of all that was in there I would have, I would have been prepared to compromise. But they didn't. They didn't move an inch, not an inch..."

Colleagues of that reporter should follow due diligence and ask that same question of Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell and see if their commitment to bipartisanship on these large issues is as sincere as President Bidens.

For more insights from the White House on the American Jobs Plan, please click below to listen to Commerce Secretary and former Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo's well presented comments on the legislation.