DULUTH, Ga. -- President Joe Biden took his pitch for $4 trillion in spending to Georgia on Thursday night, choosing a new political battleground to make his case that Americans want a more activist government. He seeks to rebuild the nation's aged infrastructure and expand the federal social safety net.
With his visit to a state he won narrowly, Biden set out to build public support for his plan and try to convince Republicans that his proposal is an investment that the country can't afford to pass up.
"We need to invest in things our families care about and need the most," Biden told hundreds of supporters who showed up for a socially distanced car rally in the Atlanta suburb of Duluth.
The trip is part of an effort to gain momentum for the big -- and expensive -- agenda Biden articulated during his first address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night. It's a dramatic shift from nearly four decades of politics in which leaders from both parties have spoken of a need to contain government.
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There's significance in Biden's decision to make Georgia his first stop after the address: He was the first Democratic presidential contender to carry the state since Bill Clinton in 1992.
Biden won Georgia by fewer than 12,000 votes out of more than 5 million cast. Long a Republican stronghold, the state is now a political battleground that will feature closely watched races for Senate and governor next year. And it will almost certainly be one of the most competitive states during the 2024 presidential campaign.
Before the evening car rally in Duluth, the president and his wife, Jill Biden, visited former President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter at their home in Plains.
Carter's defeat by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980 ushered in an era in which calls for smaller government, and lower taxes for big business and the wealthy were embraced as a tonic for economic growth.
Biden, who established himself as a moderate during his decades in elective office but has moved to a more progressive approach to governing in the early days of his presidency, offered a rebuttal Wednesday that Reagan's "trickle-down economics has never worked."
He renewed his call for the wealthiest Americans to pay more in taxes to help pay for a wide array of proposals, including universal pre-kindergarten, tuition-free community college and expanded child care benefits. Biden says his proposal for about $1.5 trillion in tax increases will target only households making $400,000 or more.
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[Or click here to read a transcript of President Joe Biden's remarks.]
"It's about time the very wealthy and corporations start paying their fair share," Biden said. "It's as simple as that."
GOP REACTION
Republicans are resisting Biden's calls for more spending but are still fine-tuning their argument and steering clear of attacking him personally.
"I think the president is hard to vilify. I think he's well-intentioned. I think he was warmly received [Wednesday night] in a personal way," said Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of the GOP leadership. "But the proposals he made are overwhelming in terms of a new footprint for the government and a new level of government spending."
Republicans have accused Biden and Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the majority leader, of offering what Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, called a "multitrillion-dollar shopping list that was neither designed nor intended to earn bipartisan buy-in."
"We heard about the so-called jobs plan, packed with punitive tax hikes at exactly the time our nation needs a recovery," McConnell said Thursday. "We heard about the so-called family plan, another gigantic tax-and-spend colossus."
"Our Democratic friends," he added, "have become addicted to divide and conquer."
GEORGIA BACKDROP
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[Or click here to read a transcript of Sen. Tim Scott's remarks.]
Along with the significance of Georgia for Biden, it's no accident that he chose Gwinnett County as the backdrop to begin making his case for the spending plan. A fast-growing suburban Atlanta county northeast of downtown, it has become a source of Democratic support in the state.
Gwinnett stands out for its racial and ethnic diversity, with fast-growing Asian American and Hispanic populations and a thriving business community of immigrants and first-generation citizens. The county anchors Georgia's 7th Congressional District, which freshman Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux flipped in 2020 to give Democrats control of both suburban House districts along metropolitan Atlanta's northern ring.
Biden is also scheduled to travel to Pennsylvania and Virginia in the days ahead to promote his spending plan. He is governing with the most slender of majorities in Congress, and even some in his own party have blanched at the price tag of his proposals.
The president has repeatedly pressed his contention that his plans would put Americans back to work, restoring the millions of jobs lost during the covid-19 pandemic. In his speech to Congress, he laid out an extensive proposal for universal preschool, two years of free community college, $225 billion for child care and monthly payments of at least $250 to parents. His ideas target frailties uncovered by the pandemic, and he argues that economic growth will best come from taxing the rich to help the middle class and the poor.
In his first three months in office, Biden has signed a $1.9 trillion covid-19 relief bill -- passed without a single GOP vote -- and shepherded direct payments of $1,400 per person to more than 160 million households. Hundreds of billions of dollars in aid will soon arrive for state and local governments, enough money that overall U.S. growth this year could eclipse 6% -- a level not seen since 1984. Administration officials are betting that it will be enough to bring back all 8.4 million jobs lost during the pandemic by next year.
Wednesday's proposal would ensure that eligible families receive at least $250 monthly per child through 2025, extending the enhanced tax credit that was part of Biden's covid-19 aid. There would be more than $400 billion for subsidized child care and free preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds.
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An additional $425 billion would go to permanently reduce health insurance premiums for people who receive coverage through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as well as a national paid family and medical leave program. Further spending would be directed toward Pell Grants, historically Black and tribal institutions and to allow people to attend community college tuition-free for two years.
PRESSURE ON SCHUMER
Now it is up to Schumer to make Biden's vision for a post-pandemic America a reality.
Schumer insists that he is willing to negotiate with Republicans on the president's second big piece of legislation, seeking a consensus that some of the moderate Democrats, including Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, are demanding.
But it is already clear that the odds of such a compromise are slight, leaving Schumer with a difficult task.
With Republicans suffering sticker shock from the new spending proposals and offering their own infrastructure package that is a fraction of the cost, the gulf between the two parties is large. Yet a handful of Democrats who could be crucial swing votes believe it is misguided and politically dangerous to pass legislation this big without buy-in from the other party.
Schumer said he was willing to give efforts at bipartisanship some time, but with a tight window to push through any major legislation before the political warfare of the midterm elections drown out any chance of passing a law, his patience extends only so far.
"Now look," he said in an interview this week in his Capitol leadership suite, "there's a number of people in our caucus who believe strongly in bipartisanship and want us to try that. And that's fair. And we will. And we've made a good start."
He pointed to some modest measures like a water projects bill that passed Thursday with support from both parties. But on crucial components of Biden's plan -- like the tax increases on high earners and corporations -- there is no such middle ground to be found.
While Schumer awaits bipartisanship, he is preparing for procedural war -- a prospect growing more likely considering the scope of Biden's emerging agenda.
"If and when it becomes clear that Republicans won't join us in big, bold action, we will move in that direction" without them, Schumer said.
For now, Schumer is putting the onus on others to show they can produce a compromise. Republicans this week presented their own $568 billion infrastructure blueprint, which includes less than one-tenth the amount of spending that Biden has proposed for public-works projects.
The president welcomed that effort in his speech Wednesday, saying he was open to hearing competing ideas, while cautioning that "the rest of the world is not waiting for us."
Information for this article was contributed by Zeke Miller, Aamer Madhani, Bill Barrow, Jonathan Lemire, Darlene Superville, Lisa Mascaro and Josh Boak of The Associated Press; and by Carl Hulse of The New York Times.
