Joe Biden, who served almost 50 years as a politician in Washington, promised Thursday he would solve the coronavirus, poverty, climate change, and racism if he is elected president.
Biden made these lofty promises in a 3,000-plus-word speech accepting the Democrat presidential nomination.
However, it was unclear what exactly he would do differently from his eight years as vice president and 37 years as a United States senator.
His plan to “get control” of the virus laid out steps that President Donald Trump has already been taking.
Nevertheless, Biden pledged, “As president, the first step I will take will be to get control of the virus that’s ruined so many lives.”
He said the country would develop and deploy rapid tests with results available immediately — something the Trump administration has already been working on.
He said the U.S. would “make the medical supplies and protective equipment our country needs” — something Trump has already done with ventilators and is doing with a number of other critical equipment.
Biden pledged to “make sure our schools have the resources they need to be open, safe, and effective” — despite the CARES Act, which Trump signed into law in March, providing $31 billion to schools in emergency funding.
Biden said he would “take the muzzle off our experts” despite government experts such as Dr. Tony Fauci appearing on media incessantly.
The only new portion of Biden’s plan is a national mask mandate.
To rebuild the economy, Biden promised “modern roads, bridges, highways, broadband, ports and airports,” and “pipes that transport clean water to every community.” Biden promised to create five million new “manufacturing and technology jobs.”
Since Trump took office, the economy has added 6.7 million more jobs, with 487,000 in manufacturing — a higher density than the last three years of the Obama administration, in which Biden served, when there was only 262,000 in manufacturing, according to the Washington Post.
The Obama administration actually lost roughly 300,000 manufacturing jobs during its tenure, according to a separate Post report.
Biden also promised a health care system that “lowers premiums, deductibles, and drug prices” and builds on the Affordable Care Act and an education system that trains people “for the best jobs” but that is also affordable. He promised child care and elder care, an immigration system that “powers our economy and reflects our values,” newly empowered labor unions with equal pay for women and rising wages, and to “finally” pay essential workers.
Biden said his administration will “deal with climate change” and that it was an “opportunity” to lead the world in clean energy and create “millions” of new “good-paying jobs” in the process, without mentioning jobs that would be lost in the process.
During a Democrat debate in December, Biden was asked whether he was willing to sacrifice “hundreds of thousands of blue-collar workers in the interest of transitioning to the greener economy.”
“The answer is yes,” Biden said. “The answer is yes because the opportunity for those workers to transition to high paying jobs is real.”
Biden said all of his proposals could be paid for by ending tax loopholes, tax cuts under the Trump administration, and by taxing the wealthiest one percent and the most profitable corporations.
He added, without mentioning his almost five decades in Washington, “it’s long past time the wealthiest people and the biggest corporations in this country paid their fair share.”
He then promised to root out “our systemic racism” and praised “young people” as one of the “most powerful voices.”
“They’re speaking to the inequity and injustice that has grown up in America. Economic injustice. Racial injustice. Environmental injustice.
I hear their voices and if you listen, you can hear them too,” he said.
“History has thrust one more urgent task on us. Will we be the generation that finally wipes the stain of racism from our national character?
I believe we’re up to it. I believe we’re ready,” he said, before repeating the lie that Trump called white supremacists “very fine people.”
The irony of Biden promising to solve all these problems but not having done so as vice president or in 37 years as a U.S. senator was not lost on Republicans.
House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) urged voters to look at Biden’s actual record. He said Friday on Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends:
Ultimately, you’ve got to look at what he said and has he delivered? I mean for all of the list of things that he said he would solve — every problem in the world’s going to be solved — he hasn’t solved any of them in 47 years in political office. I do think that matters. Results matter. And so you look at President Trump’s record, in just three years, he’s delivered on all the promises he’s made.
Scalise added, “We need to rebuild our economy now from COVID. Who better to do it than Donald Trump, who already did it once, not Joe Biden, who was part of so many failures … Osama bin Laden might still be around today if he was the one making the call.”
Story cited here.
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