President Joe Biden made a pitch on Friday for his proposed $80 billion to upgrade and expand Amtrak service, saying the rail system is a key to fighting climate change and could further spur the post-pandemic economic recovery.
“When I think about fighting climate change, I think about jobs and rail,” Biden said in Philadelphia. “The expansion of rail provides good union jobs, good-paying jobs. … This is the bargain of bargains of bargains.”
He touted an expanded Amtrak map as helping connect workers with jobs further away from home than they could otherwise travel by car each day.
“I’ve been riding Amtrak as long as there has been an Amtrak,” he said.”Cutting funding for Amtrak would be a disaster for the environment and for the economy.”
“Amtrak carries four times as many riders between Washington and New York City as every single airline does,” Biden said, contending that ending its service along the so-called Northeast Corridor, it would strip $100 million from the U.S. economy. His proposed cash injection would be a “once in a generation” chance to modernize Amtrak as it faces a “huge backlog in deferred maintenance,” the president said.
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His infrastructure plan also seeks tens of billions of dollars for freight rail and other train systems across the country.
Biden, whose 2020 presidential campaign was headquartered in Philadelphia, made his fourth stop to the state that put him over the top in his November defeat of then-President Donald Trump. He was there to mark the 50th anniversary of the Amtrak rail system.
But his win there was narrow, by 1.17%, and Trump won it in 2016 by an even slimmer margin, 0.72%. That makes it again among the small handful of must-win battlegrounds in the 2024 presidential race.
Biden’s job approval is at about 53%, according to averages of multiple polls conducted by several organizations. Some surveys have the figure as high as 61%, while others have him below 50%.
The 30th Street Station stop marked his second consecutive day on the road. He and first lady Jill Biden rallied supporters behind his various spending packages at a drive-in rally Thursday in Duluth, Georgia. Vice President Kamala Harris spent part of her Thursday stumping for the packages in Baltimore.
Biden stood between tracks, with new versions of the service’s Acela trains, saying his administration intends to continue seeking taxpayer funds to upgrade older models. Biden hailed Amtrak’s employees, saying they “work like the devil” as he estimated he traveled over 1 million miles via the rail service as a senator. His near-daily trips earned him the nickname “Amtrak Joe.”
Hours before Biden arrived to celebrate the rail service he used while living with his family in Wilmington, Delaware, while commuting to the Senate for decades, he was asked in a television interview about his various spending packages he contends are needed to boost the economy as the pandemic begins to fade.
“That’s the reason why it’s recovering, because we’re investing,” Biden told NBC News.
“Look how rapidly it’s recovered since we passed the last piece of legislation, and that legislation was $1.9 trillion,” he added. “If we don’t invest in this country, we’re gonna fall behind even further.”
All indications are his $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan and $1.8 trillion American Families Plan would pass both the House and Senate with only Democratic votes. If so, they would mirror his $1.9 trillion COVID-19 spending package, which he signed into law earlier this year.
Republican lawmakers have slammed the White House’s big-spending plans, saying they risk overheating the economy and driving up the national debt. They see a recklessly spending liberal president who campaigned as a centrist.
“What the president did last night was lay out a comprehensive vision for how to transition our society from capitalism to socialism. We must not be swept up in this current,” tweeted GOP Sen. James Risch of Idaho.
Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso of Wyoming said Biden’s address “may have called for unity and jobs … but his actions the first 100 days have been anything other than that. Republicans are going to fight for American values and continue to stand up against tax increases and massive borrowing and spending.”
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But Biden appears ready to go for broke with the prospects of passing major legislation or cutting substantial deals with Republicans dwindling by the day as the 2022 midterm elections linger next November.
“I don’t have any inordinate faith in government, but there’s certain things only the government can do,” Biden told NBC. “We rank No. 8 in the world in terms of infrastructure, for God’s sake. Is the private sector going to go out and build billions of dollars worth of highways, ports, airports, bridges? Are they going to do that? And so, these are things that only government can really do.”
