With a divided Congress, President Joe Biden has renewed his outreach to local and state governments as he tries to raise awareness about the bills he has signed into law amid speculation he is poised to announce his 2024 reelection campaign.
Biden’s keynote address to the National Association of Counties Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday is his second overture in as many weeks after he wined and dined attendees of the National Governors Association’s winter meeting last week.
BIDEN LOOKS TO CONVINCE VOTERS THEY’RE NOT ‘WORST OFF’ BEFORE 2024
There is no “harm” in Biden underscoring his “tangible accomplishments” to state and local officials, who implement, for example, most infrastructure projects, according to former Republican strategist-turned-Claremont McKenna College politics professor John Pitney.
“His challenge is the long interval between passing a bill and producing something that people can see on the ground,” Pitney told the Washington Examiner of Biden.
Pitney mentioned an interview by former President Barack Obama in 2010 in which he told the New York Times, “The problem is, is that spending it out takes a long time because there’s really nothing, there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects.”
Biden is “an old-fashioned lunch-bucket Democrat,” Pitney said, adding “concrete” is the president’s “substance of choice.”
But Biden only has 21 months to make his case before the 2024 elections, with an ABC News-Washington Post poll finding last week that 62% of the public considers the president to have notched “not very much” or “little or nothing” during the first two years of his administration. The same poll found 41% of respondents believe they are “worse off financially” in comparison to before his inauguration.
In response to the poll, the Republican National Committee contended sentiment is against Biden because “real wages, savings, and incomes are all down.”
“Remember that the next time Biden brags about his economic plan ‘working,'” RNC spokesman Tommy Pigott said.
Biden has acknowledged the unlikelihood he will be able to muscle any more reforms through Congress with a Republican-controlled House. For one, the president told governors last week that his and their success is set to be measured by whether “we’re able to implement what we’ve already done.”
National Association of Counties spokeswoman Nicole Weissman amplified the significance of local governments to the implementation process, many of which feature nonpartisan figures.
“The president’s participation speaks to the importance of intergovernmental partnership for achieving results on the ground,” she said.
Biden praised state executives during the Governors Ball Dinner, hosted by the White House in the State Dining Room last weekend. In a speech, he emphasized how they are “used to having to get things done,” from covering potholes to countering crime.
“I said I wanted to be president for everybody, not just blue states or red states but for everybody,” he said. “And I think, to the best we can, we’ve tried like hell to step up, particularly to the governors and mayors that — people every day are looking at people straight in the eye, face to face, and wanting to know what’s going on, what’s going to happen.”
Biden’s message to local and state governments has been mostly bipartisan, though he did step into partisan territory during both the governors’ dinner and a separate White House meeting held last Friday. Amid the latter, he referenced the raucous reception of his criticism of Republicans — such as Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Mike Lee (R-UT), who have proposed that programs, including Social Security and Medicare, be periodically reauthorized or reevaluated — during last week’s State of the Union.
“We had somewhat of a debate in the State of the Union,” he said. “I was glad to see everybody says we’re not going to cut Social Security and Medicare. I noticed that happened, but I hope that’s true. … My point is this: I believe we can be fiscally responsible without threatening our country or dealing with any chaos.”
In addition to alluding to how the Inflation Reduction Act will permit Medicare to negotiate drug prices, provisions he conceded Republicans were not “crazy about,” he also reiterated his desire to expand the $35 insulin price cap from Medicare recipients to everybody.
“Well, guess what?” he said of Medicare being able to negotiate prices. “That’s going to reduce the federal debt. That’s going to reduce the federal debt billions of dollars — $247 billion reduction in the debt by doing it. And it’s going to reduce the prices.”
Biden is expected to address “the progress we have made thanks to the American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and more,” as well as the “work that needs to be done together to implement these historic legislative victories at the local level to make a difference in people’s lives,” at the National Association of Counties conference, according to the White House.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
His remarks at the Washington Hilton Hotel will be complemented by an appearance in Maryland on Wednesday, during which he will discuss “the progress we are making building an economy from the bottom up and the middle out and about his vision to grow the economy, lower costs, and reward work, not wealth — while reducing the deficit,” the White House added.
