Biden Delivers Remarks on His Economic Playbook

President Biden is now speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington. He's giving remarks on his own economic legacy, the middle out, bottom up economic playbook. Let's tune in. She's going to inherit a fairly strong economy, at least at the moment, an economy going through fundamental transformation. It's laid out a stronger foundation and a sustainable, broad based, highly productive growth. And it's my profound hope that the new administration will preserve and build on this progress. Like most great economic developments, this one is neither red nor blue. And America's progress is everyone's progress. After decades of trickle down economics that primarily benefited those at the very top, we we've written a new book. That's growing the economy, the middle out and the bottom up. That benefits thus far everyone. And that's going to be the test that was going forward. Over 16 million new jobs. New jobs, the most in any single presidential term in American history. The lowest average unemployment rate of any administration in the last 50 years. 20 million applications for new business records. I mean, it's a new business, which is a record, I should say. Stock market is record highs. We're showing a lot of stock. You know, the worst part of all this, I acknowledge at Brookings. For 36 years, I was the poorest man in Congress. What a foolish man. Anyway, 401Ks are up. More than a trillion dollars in private sector investment in clean energy and advanced manufacturing in just two years alone. After decades of sending jobs overseas for the cheapest labor possible, companies are coming back to America, investing in building here and creating jobs here in America, in my view, where they belong. Of course, this economic growth is not without pain. The entire world faced a spike in inflation due to disruptions from the pandemic and Putin's war in Ukraine. We acted quickly to get inflation down with the help of Republicans and Democrats. Inflation came down to pre-pandemic levels. Wages have increased, but still too many working and middle-class families struggle with high prices for housing and groceries and the daily needs of life. At the same time, as inflation and interest rates continue to fall, we're entering a new phase of our economic resurgence. With the outcome of this election, we also face an inflection point. We do — do we continue to grow the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, investing in all of America and Americans, supporting unions and working families, as we have the past four years, or do we move backwards? In my view, backslide. An economy that has benefited those at the top while working people and middle-class struggle for a fair share of growth and economic theory that encourages industries and livelihoods to be shipped overseas. And I might add, I'm not anti-corporation. For 36 years, I represented corporate America. My state has more corporations and — registered in my state than every other state in the union. So I'm mildly accustomed to corporate America. And to see it grow is useful and helpful and necessary. But to make the most of the opportunities ahead of it, I want to share a few pages from our middle-out, bottom-up economic playbook and lay down what I believe to be a new set of benchmarks to measure against the next four years and see whether this theory is more than just a phenomenon. Four years ago, when I came to office, 3,000 Americans were dying per day from the pandemic that infected and then had a profound effect on our economy — not only ours, but around the world. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, were at risk of losing their homes. Hundreds of thousands of factories and businesses — excuse me, yes, hundreds of them — closed and creating despair in communities. I remember when I was campaigning, I'd say, my dad used to work at that factory. My grandfather worked at that factory. It's gone. People lost hope. Lost hope, particularly through the Midwest and other areas of the country. Supply chain was shattered. Prices soared in everything from cars to homes to appliances. The previous administration, quite frankly, had no plan — real plan — to get us through one of the toughest periods in our nation's history. In fact, there's an old saying, the only tool you have in your toolbox is a hammer. Everything looks like a nail. Over the course of decades, Republican leadership — and I'm not a — those of you who know anything about me and my career in the Senate, I have been a Republican friend since Democratic friends. For real. I'm not — I'm not one of these that you — anyway, I won't get going. But I've never been a big fan of trickle-down economics. It was a hammer that was hammering working people. My dad used to say — my dad was a well-read — well-read man who didn't get to — he got accepted to go to Hopkins and — but during the war, he never got to go. But my dad used to talk about it. He said, Dad, Joey, now the whole lot trickles down on my kitchen table again. Slashing taxes for the very wealthy and biggest corporations, diminishing public investment in infrastructure, in education, in research and development. And keep your eye on it. We're going to find out whether or not what they want to do on each of those areas continues to slash, and it makes sense or not. Offshore jobs and factories have took off for cheaper labor overseas, destroying unions while imposing costs on those products made in America. Despite the mythical reputation to pay for itself, trickle-down economics deeply worsened our fiscal outlook, in my view. To offset the cost, advocates of trickle-down economics ripped the social safety net by trying to privatize Social Security and Medicare, trying to deny access to affordable health care and prescription drugs, lifting the fortunes of the very wealthy. Often meant taking the rights of workers away to unionize and bargain collectively. And by the way, I'm all for the very wealthy. I'm not joking. If you can make as much money as you can, good for you. But everybody's got to pay their fair share. Remember rewarding short-termism in pursuit of short-term profits and extraordinary high executive pay instead of making long-term investments, in many cases. As a consequence, our infrastructure fell further behind in the flood of cheap imports hollowed out our factory towns. Remember Infrastructure Week? I got Infrastructure Week for four years. Nothing got built. Everybody said when I wanted to have an infrastructure bill, it mattered over a trillion, $300 billion. You never get it done. You got it done. Next president has a game plan I laid out. And by the way, he's going to find, since I made a promise I'd invest as much in red states as blue, he's going to have trouble not doing it. He's going to have a lot of red state senators who are opposed to all of it and vote for it, deciding it's very much in their interest to build the facilities that are out in this block. Economic opportunity and innovation became more concentrated in few major cities. While the heartland and communities were left behind. Scientific discoveries and inventions developed in America were commercialized in countries like China, bolstering the manufacturing investment and jobs instead of the economy. Even before the pandemic, this economic agenda was clearly failing. Working middle class families were being hurt. The pandemic and economic crisis revealed a failure for everyone to see and to feel. And, you know, one of the things that's going on here, they just turned off my, I lost electricity. Anyway, but one of the things we found is that, you know, we.