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michael barbaro

From The New York Times, Im Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily.

Today, during his first address to Congress, President Biden makes the case for vastly expanding the role of government and taxing the countrys wealthiest to pay for it. We watched with our colleague, White House reporter, Jim Tankersley.

Its Thursday, April 29.

So, Jim, I want to start this conversation by getting something very important out of the way immediately. Was this technically a State of the Union address, or was this not a State of the Union address? And can we just call it the State of the Union even if its not?

No, I believe we are prohibited by the Constitution from calling it a State of the Union. This was an address to a joint session of Congress, but not an official State of the Union, as is typically the case in a presidents first year in office.

So the first one not State of the Union, instead, just big important speech to Congress.

Yeah, Joe Bidens been president for almost 100 days. But what hes doing here is less of a report to the country on how the country is doing and more of a report to the country on how things are going in that very young administration of his.

Got it. So lets talk about what this speech looked like and felt like in the room. I know neither of us were there. But it feels like these speeches are always defined by the moment in which they are delivered. And this one had the context of the pandemic. This was the first joint address from the president to Congress since the pandemic really began to radically alter all of our lives in the U.S. So how present did that all feel?

It was kind of weird.

You know, the seats were not full because of Covid restrictions. There were only 200 people, instead of the normal 1,600 for a speech like this. They were all spaced out at distance. And there werent as many cabinet members. There werent as many Supreme Court justices.

Madame Speaker, the President of the United States.

A Congress that is normally sort of jockeying for position to greet the president as he walks down the aisle, looked sparse, like the crowd at the N.B.A. Finals bubble last year when there really were very few people around. And it made for some weird moments, you know? Biden was walking down, and hes sort of fist bumping people, not shaking hands like politicians expect, certainly like I would think that Joe Biden had not imagined in his mind all those years hes been envisioning himself president.

Right.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And then punctuating all that, there was certainly not a normal backdrop for him as he took the lectern flanked for the first time ever by two women.

Right, which he went out of his way to memorialize.

He did.

Anyway, thank you all, Madame Speaker, Madame Vice President.

He seemed really fired up by that particular line that kicked off the speech.

No president has ever said those words from this podium. No president has ever said those words. And its about time.

Then he settles into the actual thing that presidents always do at the start of a speech to Congress, which is to tell them how things are going in the country, really. And usually, thats very positive.

Now, after just 100 days, I can report to the nation, America is on the move again.

And in sort of quick and staccato phrases that will sort of mark this speech throughout the evening, he says

Crisis to opportunity, setbacks in the strength we all know life can knock us down. But in America, we never, ever, ever stay down.

The president tried to do a delicate two-step, which is to both acknowledge the gravity of the moment that America is still in. I mean, theres still a deadly pandemic raging around us.

Theres still more work to do to beat this virus. We cant let our guard down.

While also trying to claim credit for putting the worst of that pandemic hopefully, behind us.

Our progress these past 100 days against one of the worst pandemics in history has been one of the greatest logistical achievements logistical achievements this countrys ever seen.

And, Jim, while the president touched on a variety of items in this speech, foreign and domestic restrictions on guns that he would like to get passed, immigration reform he would like to get done, his determination to stand up to authoritarian regimes overseas it very much like the real focus of this address and what I want to talk to you about was President Bidens vision for the role of American government. And its a very expansive vision. And thats what he really seemed to be up to in this speech.

Yes, absolutely. This was an economic policy speech. But more than a policy speech, it was selling America on the idea that, hey, the government is back. Big government spending initiatives are back. And bigger government even than we have now is on the way. And its going to be really great for you personally. And he does this sort of looking backwards and forwards.

Throughout our history, if you think about it, public investment and infrastructure has literally transformed America.

He ticks through the great achievements of the federal government in American history.

The transcontinental railroad, interstate highways, united two oceans and brought a totally new age of progress to the United States of America.

Whether its World War II or railroads or you know, the space race.

These are investments we made together as one country, and investments that only the government was in a position to make. Time and again, they propel us into the future. Thats why I propose the American Jobs Plan, a once-in-a-generation investment in America itself.

Then he goes on to spend the bulk of the speech really, laying out his vision for Americas economic future, which is really two proposals that total $4 trillion in cost to taxpayers and form the Biden Economic Agenda.

Right. And, Jim, you have talked to us on the show about the first part of that plan, the American Jobs Plan, this very progressive version of what we might think of as traditional infrastructure rebuilding bridges, roads, pipes, railroads, housing in a way that seeks in Bidens words to fight climate change and achieve racial justice. So how does he talk about this not yet passed component of his agenda?

I was really struck actually by his focus in talking about that part and his just repeated use of the word jobs.

This is the largest jobs plan since World War II.

Jobs, jobs, jobs.

It creates jobs to upgrade our transportation infrastructure. Jobs, modernizing our roads, bridges, highways. Jobs, building ports

He is talking about every single piece of that physical infrastructure agenda as a job creator, the biggest job creator since World War II.

For too long we failed to use the most important word when it comes to meeting the climate crisis jobs.

And not just any jobs, blue collar jobs.

So many of you so many of the folks I grew up with feel left behind, forgotten, in an economy that so rapidly changing its frightening.

And he is really trying to speak to voters without college degrees whove been left behind by the economy, who he says he can create better paying, good jobs for.

The American Jobs Plan is a blue collar blueprint to build America. Thats what it is.

Right, windmills should be built in Pittsburgh, not Beijing.

There is simply no reason why the blades for wind turbines cant be built in Pittsburgh instead of Beijing. No reason.

Right, you know, this is Biden trying to take that progressive vision of a low-carbon future, but say it in sort of you know, Joe from Scranton terms.

And all the investments in the American Jobs Plan will be guided by one principle, buy America. Buy American.

Right, his message being, especially to Republicans, how could you not support a jobs plan? I mean, Republicans might look at this plan and say actually, we think its a climate plan and a social justice plan. But what Biden is saying is, no, Im telling you that its a jobs plan and asking how you could possibly not support it.

Right, thats exactly what hes doing. And yes, Republicans are protesting that there are studies out there showing that it wont create many jobs or any at all. But Biden is just blowing right past all that criticism and saying, millions of jobs, good paying jobs, thats what this proposal is all about. And Congress needs to pass it now.

And so whats the truth? Will this bill create jobs?

It really depends on which study you look at. There are some studies that say itll create millions of jobs. Theres one pretty notable one that says it wont. And so, the experts disagree.

Got it. And then Biden turns to the second part of this grand infrastructure spending plan, which we had not really gotten much of a glimpse of until this speech.

To win that competition for the future, in my view, we also need to make a once-in-a-generation investment in our families and our children. Thats why Ive introduced the American Families Plan tonight.

So this is what the White House calls the American Families Plan, which is a different sort of infrastructure. Its human infrastructure and a structure about people. And it breaks down into several categories. Its $1.8 trillion split between spending and tax incentives.

First, is access to good education.

So theres an education component which includes free universal preschool for three and four year-olds across the country, but also two years of free community college for anybody.

American Families Plan will provide access to quality affordable child care.

It includes help for child care, so to reduce the cost of child care, particularly for low-income workers, but also paid family and medical leave so that workers who get sick or need to take care of a loved one whos sick can do so, but not lose their jobs or their income. And thats paid by the government.

In March, we expanded tax credit for every child in the family.

And then, it extends a bunch of tax credits that are meant to fight poverty, including an expansion of the child tax credit that the White House estimates will cut the child poverty rate in half.

We can afford it.

And as he has often done in selling his physical infrastructure plan, Biden casts this families plan in competitiveness terms.

When this nation made 12 years of public education universal in the last century, it made us the best-educated, best-prepared nation in the world. Its, I believe, the overwhelming reason that propelled us to where we got in the 21st in the 20th century. But the worlds caught up, or catching up. Theyre not waiting.

Basically saying, look, if we dont invest in our families, our children, our workers just like we invest in our roads, bridges, pipes, charging stations, whatever, were not going to keep up with China and our other big competitors on a global scale right now to win the economic future of the world.

I wonder if you can put the scale of all this education spending, the child care spending, the paid leave spending, the child tax credit spending into context for us.

I think the best context to put it in is that its unprecedented at this moment in the nations economy for a president to do this. We do not have the same economy that we had when we did the space race, or when we built the railroads, or won World War II. We have an economy that depends to a much larger degree on women working, on workers of color, and in particular, on service workers who need knowledge and skills to do their jobs better. This is a far bigger spending agenda than Barack Obama ever proposed. Certainly much bigger than the Democrat president before him Bill Clinton proposed. And so what you have is for the first time, the meeting of the moment of what Democrats think is a renewed interest in big government with the heightened struggles of a 21st-century economy.

Well be right back.

So

How does President Biden in his speech, talk about financing all of this?

He does not shy from that either.

How do we pay for my Jobs and Family Plan? I made it clear we could do without increasing the deficit.

Theres been a long time in America where this idea was you couldnt really talk about increasing taxes. It would be political suicide. But he goes right at it.

I will not impose any tax increase on people making less than $400,000. But its time for corporate America, and the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans to just begin to pay their fair share.

And basically says were going to raise taxes on very high earners people making more than $400,000 a year, which is just a small sliver at the top of Americans by income earning and corporations. And were going to get $4 trillion out of those two places.

A lot of companies also evade taxes through tax havens in Switzerland and Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. And they benefit from tax loopholes and deductions for offshoring jobs and shifting profits overseas.

And then he ticks through a whole list of both tax increases and increased enforcement from the I.R.S.

And the I.R.S. is going to crack down on millionaires and billionaires who cheat on their taxes. Its estimated to be billions of dollars.

to force people who had been cheating on their taxes to stop.

I believe what I propose is fair. Fiscally responsible

You know, Republicans are very much opposed to these tax increases and to the scope of the spending he wants to do. Theyre arguing that its going to be wasteful, that its not going to solve the problems that he says, that the government is not well-positioned to tackle these issues, and that the tax increases are going to hurt the economy. But Biden goes right at that argument in the speech, basically saying

Trickle down trickle-down economics has never worked. And its time to grow the economy from the bottom and the middle out.

Hey, the dominant Republican philosophy for more than a generation now trickle-down economics, cutting taxes at the top and everybody will benefit has not worked.

The pandemic has only made things worse. 20 million Americans lost their job in the pandemic working and middle-class Americans. At the same time, roughly 650 billionaires in America saw their net worth increase by more than $1 trillion in the same exact period.

What he is saying is we have huge, long-running problems in our economy. The pandemic showed us those problems. They showed us the people who were hit unequally. You know, some people at the top amassed huge amounts of wealth, while everybody else feared for job loss. And its governments job now to start solving those problems, or helping to solve those problems, not just in a short-term way, but in a long-term durable way. And someone needs to pay for that. And that someone is the people who have been winning at this economy for a long time, the rich and big companies. And so its this economic argument, which he calls middle out, where the people who are the big successes in the economy can afford to supply the money to help everybody else have a shot at success too.

Jim, it was interesting that Biden didnt really talk about inequality. He didnt use that word. He didnt render that judgment say that whats wrong in the United States is inequality. But the policies hes talking about are very clearly intended to fix inequality in a system.

He does more of a show, dont tell on that. He talks about the 600-plus very wealthy people who amassed huge wealth during the crisis. And then he talks about people who lost their jobs. He talks about all of this sort of like inequalities you might say, without really saying the word. And its a way to sort of try to connect with people where they are in their homes. Like, inequality as a concept. But your job, what you observe around you in the economy thats real. And I think thats what hes trying to do here is speak about inequality in much more personal terms, as opposed to theoretical or even just broad macroeconomic terms.

But I wonder if this is also a way to appeal to Republicans who have not been very supportive of Bidens spending plans.

I dont think theres very much that the president did in the speech to try to appeal to Republicans in Congress. But I do think hes trying to appeal to Republicans across the country. Hes trying to speak in the language of blue collar, often conservative America, even if he doesnt expect that thats going to translate into any votes from Republicans in the Senate or in the House. But by trying to appeal to Republican voters, hes giving some cover to moderate Democratic senators to join him. If youre Joe Manchin, if youre Mark Kelly of Arizona or Krysten Sinema of Arizona, and you need some Republicans to reelect you, heres Joe Biden speaking to those voters for you and giving you some permission to go along with him.

So in trying to appeal to Republican voters, hes actually just trying to keep the 50 Democrats in the Senate the Democratic caucus together and supporting both of these major infrastructure bills?

Yes. What Biden needs for any bill of this type to pass, including one that eventually might get bipartisan support is for all Democrats to hang together. And that I think, was a big part of the mission of the speech here was to hold his very, very narrow margins in the House and the Senate kind of in line while he seeks to push the agenda through.

Jim, watching Biden outline these proposals and how to pay for them, I kept thinking back to the election and to this sense that in choosing Biden, the country chose what Biden himself advertised as the return to normalcy in the conduct and in the disposition of the president. And as a kind of safe ideological choice, Biden sold himself as a moderate Democrat with pretty middle-of-the-road views.

But as we have seen at a few key junctures with Biden since the election, it feels like this speech marked the emergence of a distinctly progressive president, a president that is seeking to really expand the role of government as a leveler of the field, as an equalizer, as a fixer of social wrongs. And thats not exactly who we necessarily thought we were going to be getting.

Well, heres the sort of wild thing. Almost every policy proposal on the economy that Joe Biden laid out in the speech he campaigned on. This is not new. Some of it dates back to 2019. Some of the stuff he was talking about when nobody really gave much of a shot to the Democratic nominee. It got kind of buried, because so many of his rivals almost all of them, really were much more progressive than he was. They were pushing even bigger tax increases, even bigger spending increases. In that field, Joe Biden really was moderate. In the context of American history, Joe Biden is pushing a very progressive agenda.

But its all on brand for him, because hes been talking about it all along. And the way he talks about it is different than the way that other politicians talk about it who are progressive. And so I think all that has come together so that both things are true. It is both true that this is seems to a lot of people, and particularly to Republicans like, whoa, not the Joe Biden we thought we were getting. We thought hed govern in a different way. But for anybody who was reading the details of his plans, hes very consistent.

Are you telling me I wasnt reading the plans?

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