The National Governors Association, chaired by New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, today sent a list of questions to the Trump Administration seeking clarity on how to most effectively distribute and administer a COVID-19 vaccine. The distribution and implementation of the vaccine is a massive undertaking that cannot be managed without significant logistical coordination, planning and financial assistance between states and the federal government. The list of questions — which were submitted from Republican and Democratic governors from around the country — covers funding for the administration of a vaccine, allocation and supply chain, and communication and information requirements.
“The National Governors Association, which I chair, sent a letter to the president of the United States last week. We asked to meet with the president to discuss how this is supposed to work between the federal government and the states,” Governor Cuomo said. “We are now releasing a compilation of questions from governors all across the country, Democratic and Republican, saying to the White House: how is this going to work? We need to answer these questions before the vaccine is available so that we are ready to go and no one is caught flat-footed when the time comes to vaccinate people.”
In his press briefing on COVID-19 in the state, Cuomo commented, “The 36 questions from the Governors sent to the White House basically are asking, ‘How does this work. We understand the concept but how does it work?’ Some of the questions: How will the vaccine be allocated to states? What formula is used – in other words, are you going to allocate it by infection rate? Are you going to allocate it by number of cases of COVID? Are you going to allocate it by population? Who determines how many each state gets – what’s the basis that you using.
“Is there a national strategy on the prioritization – in other words, the federal government going to say, ‘I think nursing homes should get it first. I think nurses should get it first. I think doctors should get it first. I think anybody over 70 should get it first.’ Is the federal government going to do that prioritization? Can they tell us if they’re going to condition the release of vaccines, right? The vaccines are controlled by the federal government. Are they going to turn around and say, ‘Well we won’t give you the vaccines, New York State, California unless you do X Y Z.’ And can we know that now? Is there multi-state coordination? On our own, during COVID we coordinated with the Northeastern states to New Jersey, Connecticut, et cetera. Is there a multi-state coordination piece here, or is everybody on their own? Am I my responsible for all of New York and there’s no connection to New Jersey and there’s no connection to Connecticut, there’s no connection to Pennsylvania?
“And who is going to pay to do this? New York State is already $50 billion in debt between state and local governments. And they have not passed legislation on the state and local relief. If the state has a deficit and the local governments have a deficit, we can’t fund essential workers. That’s who gets cut when you cut state and local governments. And now you’re going want undertake this vaccination program, which frankly requires more essential workers, not less? And they’re talking about a vaccine possibly in December. We’re here in October – this is just a few weeks to plan in this massive undertaking. Let’s learn the lessons from the past seven months. Otherwise, we’re going to relive the nightmares that we have lived through, right? Let’s not repeat the mistakes of March, April, May….
“We can’t go through that same confusion again. It’s not a question of knowing what to do. It’s a question of knowing how to do it. We know what we need to do. We need to control the virus, we need to take more tests, now we need to do vaccines. We know what we need to do. How do you do it? How do you do it – the devil’s in the details. How do you administer 40 million vaccines in the State of New York. That’s the trick. Everybody agrees with the concept. “Yes, vaccinate everyone.” Got it. How? How?
“And that’s the art form of government by the way and that’s what separates words from action and rhetoric from results and talk from competence – how do you do it? And that’s what we have to focus on now and that’s what the governors are saying to the federal government. Why? Because the way the federal government has structured it, the states are in charge of the doing. This person got to the COVID situation, he said, ‘It’s up to the Governors. It’s up to the states’. I don’t even know how that works by the way. It’s a nationwide problem. 50 states have it. But it’s not a federal response? The federal response is, ‘It’s up to you. You take charge, Governor. But I’m right behind you -go get ’em, tiger.’ Yeah, thank you very much. So again, I’m sure what the federal government is talking about is we’ll approve the vaccines, we’ll appropriate the vaccine, we then deliver them to the state. You figure out how to do it. Who pays? Insurance companies? What happens for the uninsured people? How do I keep dosages cold, – 80-degrees? Well, those are details. No. That’s the difference between life and death in a situation like this. And that’s where we have to get.”
Cuomo added, “The State will have a statewide vaccination plan. We will do it in concert with the federal government. The federal government is in charge of producing the actual vaccines and distributing the vaccines so the State’s position is we have to wait for the federal government to provide us the vaccines, what is the schedule, how many, etcetera…
“We believe there’s going to be questions about the safety of the vaccine, so we put together a special New York task force team of experts. I’m going to ask them to review any vaccine before I recommend it to the people of the state. I think that will give people added surety in the vaccine. But, we are coming up with a plan on many presumptions. We don’t really know how many doses we’re going to get. We don’t know what vaccine we’re going to get. We don’t know when we’re going to get it. So this is all preliminary. But, we would prioritize the vaccinations. The prioritization would be based on risk and essential workers would have a priority and people at risk would be prioritized and we’d set up a matrix on that regards, by that regards, and there’d be several phases to the administration of the actual doses. We’re working with our health care partners all across the state. This is going to be a massive undertaking, hospitals, urgent care facilities , primary care facilities, pharmacies, local departments of health, mobile units, mass vaccination sites.”
Here is the list of questions NGA gathered from the nation’s governors:
Funding for Vaccine Administration
Will there be funding allocated to states to assist with distribution of the vaccine and other vaccine efforts?
Without additional state and local funding to implement COVID-19 vaccine plans, we will be hampered in what we can accomplish. When can we expect more definitive information about resources related to this response?
What are the plans for any federal contracts and/or additional funding to support “boots on the ground” to vaccinate in tiers 2 and beyond?
How will vaccine administration costs be covered for people who are uninsured?
Will the federal government be setting guidelines around allowable vaccine administration costs for those with health insurance (whether that is state insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, CHIP, or some other state funded health insurance)?
How will funding/reimbursement for vaccines be handled?
We understand that the vaccine will initially be provided at no cost, as was remdesivir. However, states now must pay for remdesivir on the commercial market. How long will the federal government commit to providing the vaccine to states cost-free?
Allocation and Supply Chain
How will the vaccine be allocated to states? What formula will be used?
How will the vaccine be distributed? What mechanism will the federal government use?
Can the administration provide more guidance on what prioritization requirements will be a condition of vaccine release and to what extent will states have latitude to guide these decisions?
Are any further PREP Act changes anticipated beyond authorizations for pharmacists and interns to administer vaccine?
How is CDC planning to manage vaccine distribution to Federal entities such as Federal Prisons, the VA and other Federal organizations? Will these entities receive a vaccine supply directly from the CDC or will states manage it?
Similarly, when can states expect guidance from the federal government on the states’ responsibility to vaccinate federal employees (e.g., who is vaccinating National Guard, USPS employees, FBI, etc.
How will tribal sovereignty be respected? The CDC sent a template asking how many vaccine doses need to be sent to each IHS/tribal health facility rather than asking states where each tribe wants their vaccine doses sent (which could be one of those facilities, a DOH public health office, a private provider that they’d like to contract with, etc.)
What will be the national strategy for vaccine prioritization when supply is short?
How will management of supplies (i.e. needles, syringes, alcohol pads, band aids, etc.) work?
Will there be further guidance documents on handling ultra-cold vaccine (i.e. thawing, storage after thawing, reconstitution, etc.?
We are aware of concerns that there is already a shortage of dry ice, which is being used to store the ultracold storage vaccines during the clinical trials.
If that is true, does that shortage impact plans for shipping of ultracold storage vaccine using dry ice and containers that could store the vaccine for up to a week?
If there is a shortage of dry ice, does this change the guidance to states to not purchase additional ultracold storage freezers?
We also need guidance on redistribution of ultracold storage vaccines. If they will come in 1,000 dose shipments as indicated by the federal government, we likely will need to distribute them further in our rural areas. What will the guidelines be to do that without compromising the vaccine?
How long will the product be viable outside of the original packaging that the 1,000 doses will be shipped in? Can/will smaller volume packaging be provided in the shipment as well?
What will the federal guidance be on sub-prioritization among the initial priority groups since there will not be enough vaccine at first for even healthcare workers as a group?
Communication and Information Requirements
There has been some indication that large pharmacy chains and possibly interstate healthcare systems will register directly with the federal government. We need the specific details since many of them are also reaching out to the states. This affects our targeted enrollment of these stakeholders to onboard as Covid-19 vaccine providers. When can we expect clarification on which stakeholders will contract directly with the federal government?
Will there be coordinated multi-state process for monitoring vaccination effects (adverse effects, lack of immunity responses, etc) to ensure early warning signs are identified as quickly as possible?
Will the federal government provide current/real time information about tribal nations enrolling with the CDC for direct shipments, versus enrolling through the state?
Can the administration provide more information around long term care facilities? Specifically, are they planning to mandate vaccines in nursing homes through CMS? For example, will the use of vaccines be connected to continued Medicaid funding? If so, when would such requirements take effect?
Is the federal government going to request that states report personally identifiable COVID vaccine data? We have concerns that this may create a lack of trust and discourage people from getting vaccinated.
What is the state’s role in safety monitoring after people have been vaccinated?
How many states are using VAMS as their Immunization Information System (IIS)?
Will states share their micro-prioritization within Phase 1b?
What communication/messaging materials have been developed?
How will complex scientific data be messaged and shared publicly? What type of educational material, and in what languages, will be developed?
What information will be shared publicly on each approved vaccine? How will transparency be ensured?
CDC is planning to require reporting to the IIS within 24 hours of administration of the vaccine. We know for flu vaccine there is a dramatic lag in data coming in – how will COVID-19 vaccine data reporting be any different?
New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer are calling for a Congressional oversight investigation into the Trump administration’s politicization of government functions that have impeded the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, releasing this joint statement:
“It is an inarguable fact that the United States has had the worst response to the COVID-19 virus of any nation in the world. Nearly 7 million Americans have tested positive for the virus, and more than 200,000 Americans have been killed by it — both more than any other country. The unprecedented and unacceptable scale of this tragedy is the direct result of President Trump and the federal government’s deceit, political self-dealing, and incompetence.
“Rather than turning to the advice and direction of public health experts and career public servants, President Trump instead put the health and security of the American people in the hands of political appointees whose first priority was securing the reelection of their benefactor, with predictably tragic results.
“Last week’s revelation that the White House blocked a Department of Health and Human Services plan to utilize the U.S. Postal Service to ship five life-saving masks to every household in the country, free of charge, in April was heartbreaking. Imagine the lives that could have been saved if every household were provided masks at such a crucial time.
“Even more dangerous, the nation learned last week that political appointees at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services — over the strong objection of CDC scientists — published the indefensible guidance that said people without symptoms did not need to get tested for COVID. Coupled with the agency’s abrupt reversal earlier this week on guidance related to the airborne transmission of the virus, it’s increasingly clear that the President and his advisers are trying to undermine the credibility of experts whose facts run counter to the administration’s political agenda.
“As a country, we cannot allow this type of politically-motivated decision making to take root. Logic dictates that COVID won’t be the last public health challenge we will face, and we can’t afford to again respond by playing politics, instead of listening to the science and facts. Congress must immediately conduct an oversight investigation into the Trump administration’s response to this pandemic, including the actions at HHS and the USPS the public learned about over the past week. Especially in light of Bob Woodward’s reporting, the question of, “What did they know and when did they know it?” cannot be left to the history books to answer. Our future health and economic security depends on holding the Trump administration accountable today.”
Cuomo commented, “Governor Whitmer and I today called on Congress to immediately conduct an oversight investigation into the Trump administration’s response on this pandemic. How can you not tell the American people what you knew and when you knew it? Just ask Peter Navarro. You had a memo that said millions of Americans would be infected. Did you tell anyone? Who did you send it to? Did anyone send you back the memo with a question mark? You met with the President 180 times since that memo – did you ever mention to the President, ‘By the way, I had a concern here that millions of Americans might be infected.’ It just doesn’t pass the smell test. It can’t be true.”
While Trump continues to deny climate change as a “hoax” (one perpetrated by China to hurt US business), minimize the destruction to life and livehood of the wildfires setting the West ablaze that he blamed on California’s “failure” to adequately rake the forest floor, actively denigrate public health experts while promoting conditions for the super-spread of coronavirus, and call for Obama to be jailed for treason, former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate for president, spoke out on the urgency to address the existential climate crisis and how he would address it.
“The unrelenting impact of climate change affects every single one of us…It requires action, not denial. It requires leadership, not scapegoating…
“Our response should be grounded in science. Acting together. All of us. But like with our federal response to COVID-19, the lack of a national strategy on climate change leaves us with patchwork solutions…
“But if Trump gets a second term, these hellish events will become more common, more devastating, and more deadly.
“If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned in wildfires? How many suburbs will have been flooded out? How many suburbs will have been blown away in superstorms?
“If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if more of America is ablaze? ..
“And from the pandemic, the economic freefall, the racial unrest, and the ravages of climate change, it’s clear that we are not safe in Donald Trump’s America.
“Like the pandemic, dealing with climate change is a global crisis that requires American leadership.
“It requires a president to meet the threshold duty of the office — to care for everyone. To defend us from every attack – seen and unseen. Always and without exception. Every time.”
Here is a highlighted transcript of Vice President Joe Biden’s remarks as prepared for delivery in Delaware:
Good afternoon.
As a nation, we face one of the most difficult moments in our history. Four historic crises. All at the same time.
The worst pandemic in over 100 years, that’s killed nearly 200,000 Americans and counting.
The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, that’s cost tens of millions of American jobs and counting.
Emboldened white supremacy unseen since the 1960s and a reckoning on race long overdue.
And the undeniable, accelerating, and punishing reality of climate change and its impact on our planet and our people — on lives and livelihoods — which I’d like to talk about today.
Jill and I continue to pray for everyone in California, Oregon, Washington, and across the West as the devastating wildfires rage on — just as we’ve held in our hearts those who’ve faced hurricanes and tropical storms on our coasts, in Florida, in North Carolina, or like in parts of New Orleans where they just issued an emergency evacuation for Hurricane Sally, that’s approaching and intensifying; Floods and droughts across the Midwest, the fury of climate change everywhere — all this year, all right now.
We stand with our families who have lost everything, the firefighters and first responders risking everything to save others, and the millions of Americans caught between relocating during a pandemic or staying put as ash and smoke pollute the air they breathe.
Think about that.
People are not just worried about raging fires. They are worried about breathing air. About damage to their lungs.
Parents, already worried about Covid-19 for their kids when they’re indoors, are now worried about asthma attacks for their kids when they’re outside.
Over the past two years, the total damage from wildfires has reached nearly $50 Billion in California alone.
This year alone, nearly 5 million acres have burned across 10 states — more acres than the entire state of Connecticut.
And it’s only September. California’s wildfire season typically runs through October.
Fires are blazing so bright and smoke reaching so far, NASA satellites can see them a million miles away in space.
The cost of this year’s damage will again be astronomically high.
But think of the view from the ground, in the smoldering ashes.
Loved ones lost, along with the photos and keepsakes of their memory. Spouses and kids praying each night that their firefighting husband, wife, father, and mother will come home. Entire communities destroyed.
We have to act as a nation. It shouldn’t be so bad that millions of Americans live in the shadow of an orange sky and are left asking if doomsday is here.
I know this feeling of dread and anxiety extends beyond just the fires. We’ve seen a record hurricane season costing billions of dollars. Last month, Hurricane Laura intensified at a near-record rate just before its landfall along Louisiana and the Gulf Coast.
It’s a troubling marker not just for an increased frequency of hurricanes, but more powerful and destructive storms. They’re causing record damage after record damage to people’s homes and livelihoods.
And before it intensified and hit the Gulf Coast, Laura ravaged Puerto Rico — where, three years after Hurricane Maria — our fellow Americans are still recovering from its damage and devastation.
Think about that reality.
Our fellow Americans are still putting things back together from the last big storm as they face the next one.
We’ve also seen historic flooding in the Midwest — often compounding the damages delivered by last year’s floods that cost billions dollars in damage.
This past spring Midland, Michigan experienced a flood so devastating — with deadly flash flooding, overrunning dams and roadways, and the displacement of 10,000 residents — that it was considered a once-in-500-year weather event.
But those once-in-many-generations events? They happen every year now.
The past ten years were the hottest decade ever recorded. The Arctic is literally melting. Parts are on fire.
What we’re seeing in America — in our communities — is connected to that.
With every bout with nature’s fury, caused by our own inaction on climate change, more Americans see and feel the devastation in big cities, small towns, on coastlines and farmlands.
It is happening everywhere. It is happening now. It affects us all.
Nearly two hundred cities are experiencing the longest stretches of deadly heat waves in fifty years. It requires them to help their poor and elderly residents adapt to extreme heat to simply stay alive, especially in homes without air conditioning.
Our family farmers in the Midwest are facing historic droughts.
These follow record floods and hurricane-speed windstorms all this year.
It’s ravaged millions of acres of corn, soybeans, and other crops. Their very livelihood which sustained their families and our economy for generations is now in jeopardy. How will they pay their bills this year? What will be left to pass on to their kids?
And none of this happens in a vacuum.
A recent study showed air pollution is linked with an increased risk of death from COVID-19.
Our economy can’t recover if we don’t build back with more resiliency to withstand extreme weather — extreme weather that will only come with more frequency.
The unrelenting impact of climate change affects every single one of us. But too often the brunt falls disproportionately on communities of color, exacerbating the need for environmental justice.
These are the interlocking crises of our time.
It requires action, not denial.
It requires leadership, not scapegoating.
It requires a president to meet the threshold duty of the office — to care for everyone. To defend us from every attack – seen and unseen. Always and without exception. Every time.
Because here’s the deal.
Hurricanes don’t swerve to avoid “blue states.” Wildfires don’t skip towns that voted a certain way.
The impacts of climate change don’t pick and choose. That’s because it’s not a partisan phenomenon.
It’s science.
And our response should be the same. Grounded in science. Acting together. All of us.
But like with our federal response to COVID-19, the lack of a national strategy on climate change leaves us with patchwork solutions.
I’m speaking from Delaware, the lowest-lying state in the nation, where just last week the state’s Attorney General sued 31 big fossil fuel companies alleging that they knowingly wreaked damage on the climate.
Damage that is plain to everyone but the president.
As he flies to California today, we know he has no interest in meeting this moment.
We know he won’t listen to the experts or treat this disaster with the urgency it demands, as any president should do during a national emergency.
He’s already said he wanted to withhold aid to California — to punish the people of California — because they didn’t vote for him.
This is yet another crisis he won’t take responsibility for.
The West is literally on fire and he blames the people whose homes and communities are burning.
He says, “You gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests.”
This is the same president who threw paper towels to the people of Puerto Rico instead of truly helping them recover and rebuild.
We know his disdain for his own military leaders and our veterans.
Just last year, the Defense Department reported that climate change is a direct threat to more than two-thirds of our military’s operationally critical installations. And this could well be a conservative estimate.
Donald Trump’s climate denial may not have caused the record fires, record floods, and record hurricanes.
But if he gets a second term, these hellish events will become more common, more devastating, and more deadly.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump warns that integration is threatening our suburbs. That’s ridiculous.
But you know what’s actually threatening our suburbs?
Wildfires are burning the suburbs in the West. Floods are wiping out suburban neighborhoods in the Midwest. And hurricanes are imperiling suburban life along our coasts.
If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned in wildfires? How many suburbs will have been flooded out? How many suburbs will have been blown away in superstorms?
If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if more of America is ablaze?
If you give a climate denier four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised when more of America is under water?
We need a president who respects science, who understands that the damage from climate change is already here, and, unless we take urgent action, will soon be more catastrophic.
A president who recognizes, understands, and cares that Americans are dying.
Which makes President Trump’s climate denialism — his disdain of science and facts — all the more unconscionable.
Once again, he fails the most basic duty to this nation.
He fails to protect us.
And from the pandemic, the economic freefall, the racial unrest, and the ravages of climate change, it’s clear that we are not safe in Donald Trump’s America.
What he doesn’t get is that even in crisis, there is nothing beyond our capacity as a country.
And while so many of you are hurting right now, I want you to know that if you give me the honor of serving as your President, we can, and we will, meet this moment with urgency and purpose.
We can and we will solve the climate crisis, and build back better than we were before.
When Donald Trump thinks about climate change he thinks: “hoax.”
I think: “jobs.”
Good-paying, union jobs that put Americans to work building a stronger, more climate resilient nation.
A nation with modernized water, transportation and energy infrastructure to withstand the impacts of extreme weather and a changing climate.
When Donald Trump thinks about renewable energy, he sees windmills somehow causing cancer.
I see American manufacturing — and American workers — racing to lead the global market. I also see farmers making American agriculture first in the world to achieve net-zero emissions, and gaining new sources of income in the process.
When Donald Trump thinks about LED bulbs, he says he doesn’t like them because: “the light’s no good. I always look orange.”
I see the small businesses and master electricians designing and installing award-winning energy conservation measures.
This will reduce the electricity consumption and save businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in energy costs.
While he turns us against our allies, I will bring us back into the Paris Agreement. I will put us back in the business of leading the world on climate change. And I will challenge everyone to up the ante on their climate commitments.
Where he reverses the Obama-Biden fuel-efficiency standards, he picks Big Oil companies over the American workers.
I will not only bring the standards back, I will set new, ambitious ones — that our workers are ready to meet.
And I also see American workers building and installing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations across the country and American consumers switching to electric vehicles through rebates and incentives.
Not only that, the United States owns and maintains an enormous fleet of vehicles — and we’re going to harness the purchasing power of our federal government to make sure we are buying electric vehicles that are made and sourced by union workers right here in the United States of America.
All together, this will mean one million new jobs in the American auto industry.
And we’ll do another big thing: put us on a path of achieving a carbon-pollution free electricity sector by 2035 that no future president can turn back.
Transforming the American electricity sector to produce power without carbon pollution will be the greatest spur to job creation and economic competitiveness in the 21st Century. Not to mention the positive benefits to our health and our environment.
We need to get to work right away.
We’ll need scientists at national labs and land-grant universities and Historically Black Colleges and Universities to improve and innovate the technologies needed to generate, store, and transmit this clean electricity.
We’ll need engineers to design them and workers to manufacture them. We’ll need iron workers and welders to install them.
And we’ll become the world’s largest exporter of these technologies, creating even more jobs.
We know how to do this.
The Obama-Biden Administration rescued the auto industry and helped them retool.
We made solar energy cost-competitive with traditional energy, and weatherized more than a million homes.
We will do it again — bigger and faster and better than before.
We’ll also build 1.5 million new energy-efficient homes and public housing units that will benefit our communities three-times over — by alleviating the affordable housing crisis, by increasing energy efficiency, and by reducing the racial wealth gap linked to home ownership.
There are thousands of oil and natural gas wells that the oil and gas companies have just abandoned, many of which are leaking toxins.
We can create 250,000 jobs plugging those wells right away — good union jobs for energy workers. This will help sustain communities and protect the environment as well.
We’ll also create new markets for our family farmers and ranchers.
We’ll launch a new, modern day Civilian Climate Corps to heal our public lands and make us less vulnerable to wildfires and floods.
I believe that every American has a fundamental right to breathe clean air and drink clean water. But I know that we haven’t fulfilled that right.
That’s true of the millions of families struggling with the smoke created by these devastating wildfires right now.
But it’s also been true for a generation or more in places — like Cancer Alley in Louisiana or along the Route 9 corridor right here in Delaware.
Fulfilling this basic obligation to all Americans — especially Black, Brown, and Native American communities, who too often don’t have clean air and clean water — is not going to be easy.
But it is necessary. And I am committed to doing it.
These aren’t pie-in-the-sky dreams. These are concrete, actionable policies that create jobs, mitigate climate change, and put our nation on the road to net-zero emissions by no later than 2050.
Some say that we can’t afford to fix this.
But here’s the thing.
Look around at the crushing consequences of the extreme weather events I’ve been describing. We’ve already been paying for it. So we have a choice.
We can invest in our infrastructure to make it stronger and more resilient, while at the same time tackling the root causes of climate change.
Or, we can continue down the path of Donald Trump’s indifference, costing tens of billions of dollars to rebuild, and where the human costs — the lives and livelihoods and homes and communities destroyed — are immeasurable.
We have a choice.
We can commit to doing this together because we know that climate change is the existential challenge that will define our future as a country, for our children, grandchildren, and great-children.
Or, there’s Donald Trump’s way — to ignore the facts, to deny reality that amounts to full surrender and a failure to lead.
It’s backward-looking politics that will harm the environment, make communities less healthy, and hold back economic progress while other countries race ahead.
And it’s a mindset that doesn’t have any faith in the capacity of the American people to compete, to innovate, and to win.
Like the pandemic, dealing with climate change is a global crisis that requires American leadership.
It requires a president for all Americans.
So as the fires rage out West on this day, our prayers remain with everyone under the ash.
I know it’s hard to see the sun rise and believe today will be better than yesterday when America faces this historic inflection point.
A time of real peril, but also a time of extraordinary possibilities.
I want you to know that we can do this.
We will do this.
We are America.
We see the light through the dark smoke.
We never give up.
Always.
Without exception.
Every time.
May God bless our firefighters and first responders.
Using his trademark restraint, Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate for Trump, could not contain his revulsion and distress in condemning in harshest terms Donald Trump’s remarks denigrating POWs and the soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice for their nation. The speech was supposed to be about the economy, and despite some favorable jobs numbers which have brought down the unemployment rate somewhat, a take-down of Trump’s incompetent handling of COVID-19 and the economy and lack of leadership which have made the situation so much worse. But the revelations the night before about remarks Trump made concerning the military, on top of Trump’s call to supporters to vote twice, and his refusal, yet again, to say anything against Vladimir Putin, prompted him to say, in response to a question, “I’ve never been as disappointed in my whole career with a leader that I’ve worked with, president or otherwise. If [the Atlantic] article is true, based on other things he has said, it is damnable. A disgrace….
“It is sick. It is deplorable. It is so un-American, so unpatriotic.”
The comments attributed to Trump, he said, “affirm what we already know to be true: Donald Trump is not fit for the job of president, or to hold the title commander in chief.”
Biden declared, “It is a sacred duty to ensure we properly prepare and equip those we send into harm’s way, and to care for them and their families, both while they are deployed and after they return home.
“Duty, honor, country — those are the values that drive our service members.
“President Trump has demonstrated he has no sense of service, no loyalty to any cause other than himself.
“And if I have the honor of serving as the next Commander-in-Chief, I will ensure that our American heroes know I will have their back and honor their sacrifice — always.”
And about the jobs report and economic situation, he said, “you can’t deal with the economic crisis until you beat the pandemic.”
“No matter what he says or what he claims, you are not safer in Donald Trump’s America. You are not safe in Trump’s America where people are dying at a rate last seen when Americans were fighting in World War II.”
Here are Vice President Biden’s highlighted remarks:
Good afternoon.
Before I begin, I wanted to speak to the revelations about President Trump’s disregard for our military and veterans.
They are disgusting. They affirm what we already know to be true: Donald Trump is not fit for the job of president, or to hold the title commander in chief.
The president reportedly said that those who sign up to serve — instead of doing something more lucrative — are suckers. So let me be clear: my son Beau, who volunteered to go to Iraq, was not a sucker.
The men and women who served with him are not suckers, and the service men and women he served with, who did not come home, are not losers.
If these statements are true, the president should humbly apologize to every person in uniform, and every Gold Star and Blue Star family he has insulted.
Who the hell does he think he is?
Is it true? Well, we’ve heard from his own mouth his characterization of American hero John McCain as a loser, and his dismissal of the traumatic brain injuries suffered by troops serving in Iraq as mere “‘headaches.”
He stood by, failing to take action or even raise the issue with Vladimir Putin, while the Kremlin put bounties on the heads of American troops serving in Afghanistan.
It is a sacred duty to ensure we properly prepare and equip those we send into harm’s way, and to care for them and their families, both while they are deployed and after they return home.
Duty, honor, country — those are the values that drive our service members.
President Trump has demonstrated he has no sense of service, no loyalty to any cause other than himself.
And if I have the honor of serving as the next Commander-in-Chief, I will ensure that our American heroes know I will have their back and honor their sacrifice — always.
And that’s just another marker of how deeply President Trump and I disagree about the role of the President of the United States.
The August jobs report came out this morning.
I am grateful for everyone who found work again and found a glimmer of hope that brings them back from the edge.
But there is real cause for concern, too.
The pace of job gains in August was slower than in July — and significantly slower than May or June.
More and more temporary layoffs are turning into permanent layoffs.
After six months in the pandemic, we are less than halfway back to where we were — with 11.5 Million Americans not yet getting their jobs back.
We’re still down 720,000 manufacturing jobs. In fact, Trump may well be the only president in modern history to leave office with fewer jobs than when he took office.
Talk to a lot of real working people who are being left behind — ask them, do you feel the economy is coming back?
They don’t feel it.
That’s why I’m here today.
Thank you, Paul Calistro and his team, for hosting us at West End Neighborhood House here in Wilmington.
You continue a tradition of doing God’s work for this community.
For more than 130 years, through pandemics, wars, and depression, West End has been there for generations of people who are just looking for a chance. Not a handout.
Just a fair shot at a good job, a safe place to live, and a better life to pass down to their kids.
And it’s a special place for the Biden family. My daughter Ashley worked here as a caseworker helping young people aging out of foster care.
When he was Attorney General of Delaware, my son Beau came here – right here – to learn more about its job training programs for folks working toward a GED and a certificate for a good-paying job.
And when I was Senator and Vice President, there were plenty of economists around to talk about how the economy was doing.
But I’d always think about the people who walk through these doors.
If working people — white, Black, Brown, Latino — here were doing okay, then I knew the economy was doing okay. If they weren’t, then I knew we weren’t.
And that’s what we should think about with the latest jobs report.
But the report reinforces our worst fears and painful truths — the economic inequities that began before the downturn have only worsened under this failed presidency.
When the crisis started, we all hoped for a few months of a shutdown followed by a rapid economic turnaround. No one thought they’d lose their job for good or see small businesses shut down in mass.
But that kind of recovery requires leadership — leadership we just don’t have.
As a result, economists are starting to call this a K-shaped recovery — which is a fancy phrase for what’s been wrong with everything about Trump’s presidency.
The “K” means that those at the top see things go up, but those in the middle and below see things get worse.
That’s no surprise because at the root of this is the fact that Trump has managed COVID to become a K-shaped pandemic.
First, the president’s chaotic mismanagement of the pandemic is still holding us back.
And compared to other major industrial countries in Europe and Asia during the pandemic, our unemployment rate has still more than doubled while those nations have only gone up by less than half.
Why? Because the president has botched the COVID response. Botched it badly.
I’ve said from the beginning, you can’t deal with the economic crisis until you beat the pandemic.
You can’t have a full economic comeback, when almost 1,000 Americans die each day from COVID, when the death toll is about to reach 200,000, when more than six million Americans have been infected, and when millions more are worried about getting sick and dying as schools and businesses try to reopen. And we all know it didn’t have to be this bad. It didn’t have to be this bad if the president just did his job.
If he just took this virus seriously early on in January and February as it spread around the globe.
If he just took the steps we needed back in March and April to institute widespread testing and tracing to control the spread.
If he provided clear, national, and science-based guidance to state and local authorities, and if he had just set a good example like social distancing and mask wearing. Not that much to ask.
But it’s almost like he doesn’t care because it doesn’t affect him and his class of friends.
Anyone with a big enough checkbook can get a rapid test on demand.
If you don’t, you might have to wait in line for hours and weeks for results — if you can get a test at all.
If you have the kind of job where you can work on your laptop — at home, or remotely — your risk of getting COVID at work is small.
This jobs report shows that 37 million workers reported teleworking in August.
But if you work on an assembly line or at a checkout counter orat a meat packing plant, or if you drive a truck or deliver packages — you’re at greater risk.
And the jobs report shows that more than 24 million workers reported that they couldn’t work or lost hours because their employer had to close or lost business due to the pandemic.
If you can hire a private tutor, or have live-in child care, you can balance being a parent and remote schooling.
If you can’t, you have to do your job and be a teacher all at once.
Jill and I just held a briefing on reopening schools safely two days ago, asking the questions we hear from so many parents and educators who feel like they are in an impossible situation: What are we supposed to do with our children when the president has made it so hard for schools to reopen safely?
What’s the alternative when it’s devastating to keep them isolated from their friends and support system?
I also said earlier this week, to the shock of many, that we have lost more cops this year to covid than when they’re on patrol.
It’s a reminder how a dangerous job — law enforcement — has gotten more dangerous due to Trump’s mismanagement.
What may be just as shocking as that is many other jobs have also become dangerous due to Covid.
Being a health care worker is now more dangerous than ever — we’ve lost hundreds of them this year because they weren’t protected from COVID on the job.
Being a meat packer is more dangerous — so many have died due to getting COVID at work.
Work for waiters and waitresses and transit workers has all become more dangerous with so many dying of COVID.
Ladies and gentlemen, no matter what he says or what he claims, you are not safer in Donald Trump’s America. You are not safe in Trump’s America where people are dying at a rate last seen when Americans were fighting in World War II.
Donald Trump’s malpractice during this pandemic has made being a working American life-or-death work.
And while there’s a disproportionate impact on Black, Latino, Asian American, and Native American working class communities — white working class communities are being hit hard, too.
Opioid deaths, for example, are up during the pandemic —another crisis that President Trump all but ignores.
In the meantime, Trump and his friends have strong views about what the rest of America should do:
Cut unemployment benefits to force people to go back on their jobs.
Defund Social Security and eliminate Obamacare — in the middle of a pandemic.
Reopen public schools without resources or guidance.
Reopen businesses without protection for workers so corporations can continue to soar
This is their plan?
Second, and similarly, the economic pain remains unrelenting for millions of working people of every race and background who aren’t getting the relief they need.
Meanwhile the wealthy are doing just fine, if not better than ever.
This divergence in fortune is unique to any recession in recent memory.
And the painful truth is we have a president who just doesn’t see it.
Who doesn’t feel it. Who doesn’t understand. He just doesn’t care.
He thinks if the stock market is up, then everything is great.
If his rich friends and donors are doing well, then everyone is doing well.
If corporations see their valuations rising — then they must be hiring.
But even the best economists know what I know growing up in neighborhoods in Scranton, Pennsylvania and Claymont, Delaware — places where folks aren’t invested in the market like wealthier Americans.
The measure of our economic success is the quality of life of the American people. And if our stocks soar as families teeter on the brink of hunger and homelessness — and our president calls that a success — what does that say about what he values?
When you see the world in such a narrow way, it’s no wonder he doesn’t see the nearly 30 million Americans on unemployment, and 1 in 6 small businesses that are closed right now.
He doesn’t understand what life is like for people walking by their boarded up shop — educators afraid that doing the job they love will bring the virus home to the people they love — or a parent searching for health insurance now that the furlough has turned into a layoff.
It’s no wonder he doesn’t see the single mom forced to wait in a three-hour food line for the first time in her life because she’s now part of a record 1 in 6 households with children that don’t have enough food to eat.
He wants us to believe that we’re doing better — to keep it up while we’re still in a deep, deep hole —and our country faces a historic divergence in our way of life.
Which gets to my third point and final point — and what the American people really need to understand — all the pain and suffering stems from President Trump’s failure to lead.
His sheer inability and unwillingness to bring people together.
He likes to sign executive actions for photo ops. But they are ill-conceived and could do more harm than good.
He says he is protecting renters from eviction, but he’s not giving them any support to pay their rent.
Millions of Americans will ultimately be left with a terrible choice between eviction and living on the street — or paying back rent they simply don’t have.
He says he is continuing to provide enhanced unemployment insurance payments — but he cut the amount for everyone on it and will leave them on the edge when it runs out in a few weeks or sooner.
What he should be doing is calling Congressional leaders together — immediately — to get a deal that delivers real relief to the American people.
If I were president, that’s what I would do — and I’d get it done.
Rental, food, unemployment assistance to tens of millions of struggling Americans.
Student loan relief, small business support, and aid to schools and state governments. And as long as this pandemic and the accompanying economic catastrophe persist, no one should have their water or their power cut off because they can’t afford to pay the bill.
Bottom line, Mr. President — do your job.
Get off your golf course and out of the sand bunker. Call the leaders of Congress together. Get them into the Oval Office. Make a deal that delivers for working people.
In July, I laid out my Build Back Better plan for an economy that works for everyone.
Over the next three weeks, I will be laying out the sharp contrast with President Trump.
I’ll be asking the American people three basic questions: Who can handle the pandemic? Who can keep their promises? Who cares about and will fight for working families?
Like the people here at West End. Throughout this pandemic, they found a way to keep the center open safely to provide their critical services.
No one was laid off. They adjusted their space for social distancing. They started a lending program to help local small businesses.
They continued their child care services, which is critical for so many working families. By pure courage, heart and gut, they never give up and they never give in as they pursue the full promise of America.
That’s the story of the people of this community and of this country. That’s who we are.
Give ordinary Americans just a half a chance and they will do extraordinary things.
They’ll never let America down — and unlike the current President — I won’t either.
TO: Interested Parties FROM: Kate Bedingfield, Deputy Campaign Manager and Communications Director RE: President Trump’s Coronavirus Lies: 152 and Counting DATE: August 14, 2020
As Vice President Biden has said many times, the American people can face any challenge if you simply tell them the truth, but from the very beginning of this crisis President Trump has refused to be honest with the American people about the scope of the challenge that we face with COVID-19, or the steps needed to stop it, save lives, and get our country back to work.
Simply put, Trump has regularly lied to the American people on matters of life-and-death. This report details over 150 instances of Trump’s misleading claims or outright mistruths. There are undoubtedly more. As our country crosses the grim milestone of five million coronavirus cases, it shows the clear cost to the American people of his dishonesty.
From the outset, President Trump has lied by downplaying the threat posed by COVID-19, claiming that “one day, like a miracle, it will disappear” — repeating Chinese Communist Party propaganda about the virus instead of listening to the warnings being raised by our government’s leading public health experts and the intelligence community. Many months later, Trump has repeatedly returned to this same lie even as cases spike and America faces the worst outbreak among any advanced economy .
Trump has lied by attacking the medical experts who should be guiding our response — launching personal attacks at Dr. Fauci, twisting the advice being provided by the top public health experts in America, and constantly undermining guidance from them on the steps we must take to get COVID-19 under control. Unfortunately for Trump, poll after poll shows that the American people overwhelmingly trust the experts like Dr. Fauci over him.
Similarly, President Trump has misled the American people by hawking unproven, and possibly dangerous, treatments for the coronavirus even as he spent months dismissing and even attacking common sense steps to slow the spread of the virus, including wearing a mask and practicing social distancing.
We can, and we must, do better than Donald Trump’s lies if we want to stop COVID-19. At every step of this crisis, Trump’s failed leadership has produced tragic results, with more than 160,000 Americans dead, over five million infected, and our economy reeling from the biggest contraction in recorded history.
To beat this virus, we need a President who will level with the American people and tell them the truth about the challenges we face, and how to overcome them. Vice President Biden knows that if we’re going to beat this virus, we need to be honest with the American people — we need a President who leads by example, not someone who shirks responsibility and lies constantly in an attempt to cover up for his own failures.
That’s why Vice President Biden has laid out a bold plan to combat this virus — starting by listening to the experts, telling the truth about what it will take to overcome this scourge, and then mobilizing our country to get it done. That’s how we’ve always come together as one America, united in common purpose, to face the greatest challenges that have faced our nation, and that’s exactly how we’re going to beat COVID-19.
TRUMP’S COVID-19 LIES:
A. Minimizing the Threat of the Virus:
Trump claimed that the threat of coronavirus to the U.S. was a Democrat political hoax.
Trump repeatedly undersold the threat of the virus and claimed his administration was “ahead” of it.
Trump claimed the media was exaggerating the threat of coronavirus.
Trump repeatedly claimed that the virus would simply “go away.”
Trump claimed that warmer weather weakens the virus, and that it would go away by April, based on information given to him by President Xi.
In mid-April, Trump claimed that some states did not have “any problem” with coronavirus.
In July, Trump claimed that “large portions” of the U.S. are “corona-free.”
Trump repeatedly implied the virus was no more serious than the seasonal flu.
Trump baselessly asserted that the coronavirus mortality rate calculated by the WHO is incorrect.
Trump claimed that the virus is 99% harmless.
In mid-June, Trump claimed that the virus was “dying out” and “leaving.”
Trump has downplayed recent surges as “flames” that could easily be “put out.”
Trump has repeatedly understated the crisis in Florida.
Trump implies that the virus does not harm young people and that children are “virtually immune.”
Trump said that coronavirus could be referred to as simply “a flu” or “a germ,” and that no one really knows what to call it.
Trump claimed that one of the COVID-19 death projections did not account for mitigation measures, like social distancing.
Trump tried to differentiate the Spanish influenza from the current pandemic by claiming that the mortality rate among those infected was 50%.
Trump claimed that health experts, including Dr. Fauci, said coronavirus was not a problem in February.
Trump claimed that “nobody knew anything” about the virus in January.
Trump claimed, in early March, that the virus had only hit three weeks ago.
In April, Trump claimed, “you may not even have corona coming back” in a second wave.
B. Trump’s Response to Virus: General:
Trump claimed that no one could have predicted that the United States would face a pandemic because of coronavirus.
Trump lied about and exaggerated the efficacy of his administration’s response, claiming that they had done a “great” job at containing and combating the virus.
Trump repeatedly claimed that the virus was “under control.”
Trump claims that the United States’ response to the virus has been the most aggressive in the world.
Trump baselessly claims that he has been “right” about coronavirus more than anyone else, including public health experts.
Trump misleadingly cited a Gallup poll to exaggerate the approval ratings of his administration’s response to Coronavirus.
Trump claimed that the public’s approval rating of his response to the virus was higher than the approval of the Obama administration’s handling of H1N1.
China Travel Restrictions:
On at least 40 occasions, Trump claimed he had imposed an outright “ban” on travel from China and “closed the borders” against the advice of experts, which he has claimed saved “thousands,” “hundreds of thousands,” and even “millions” of lives.
Trump claimed he was the first to restrict travel to and from China. He was particularly adamant that Italy and other European countries had not limited travel to and from China, which led to their high number of coronavirus cases.
Trump claimed that everyone, including public health experts, disagreed with his decision to implement restrictions from China.
Europe Travel Restrictions:
Trump claimed at least 20 times to have banned travel from Europe, and claimed that all U.S. citizens travelling from Europe would be subject to screening, testing, and quarantine if necessary.
Trump claimed to have barred travel to Italy prior to his March 11 ban on travel to all of Europe.
Trump claims that cases are also surging in European countries because of their extended lock-down orders.
U.S. Borders:
Trump claimed the U.S. had some troops on the U.S.-Canadian Border.
Trump claims that without more stringent patrol of the U.S.-Mexico border, the border would have become the “global epicenter of the viral transmission.”
Dr. Fauci:
Trump attempts to undermine Dr. Fauci’s credibility with false claims about Fauci’s past recommendations.
Trump claims he has a very good relationship with Dr. Fauci and has distanced himself from his administration’s attempts to discredit Dr. Fauci.
Other Claims:
Trump claimed states did not need federal assistance to acquire medical supplies and personal protective equipment and that they were fully stocked.
Trump claimed in April that he hadn’t left the White House in “months.”
Trump repeatedly claimed to have fully invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA), which enables the federal government to order private industry to produce specific items like testing and PPE when he had not actually done so.
C. Testing Capacities: Nature of Tests:
Trump claimed multiple times that testing was readily available for anyone who wanted one.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that U.S. testing is “perfect” and the “best in the world.”
Trump later admitted that there were some issues with the initial coronavirus test, but claimed it took “about a week” to solve.
Trump claimed that testing was “overrated.” and that “testing isn’t necessary.”
Trump said past administrations were to blame for his administration’s delays in developing and deploying coronavirus tests.
Number of Tests:
Trump has continuously claimed that the United States is “number one” in testing, or has the “best testing.”
In March, Trump claimed that the U.S. had done more testing than any other nation, including South Korea.
By April, Trump escalated his previous lie and claimed that the U.S. had completed more coronavirus tests than the rest of the world (or all other “major” countries) combined. He has made some version of this claim at least 13 times.
Trump said the U.S. would not “need anywhere near” 5 million tests.
Trump said in late April that we would reach 5 million tests conducted per day “very soon.”
Trump claimed that the federal government was providing more testing capacities than Governors needed.
Trump baselessly claimed the report by the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, which detailed complaints from hospitals regarding wait times and shortages of testing supplies, was “wrong” and politically motivated.
Trump exaggerated the number of tests that the U.S. had completed.
Number of Cases:
Throughout the spring, Trump claimed the U.S. had reached its peak in cases and was “heading down.”
Trump claims that we only have the highest number of coronavirus cases globally because we were doing the most testing in the world.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that coronavirus cases only surged in June because of increased testing.
When forced to admit that the increase in cases is not exclusively a result of more testing, Trump claims that most of the cases are harmless.
Testing and the Private Sector:
Trump claimed that Google had engineered a website that helped Americans decide whether they need testing, and where they could obtain it.
Trump claimed testing was available and provided to passengers on trains and planes.
In May, Trump said workers returning to their jobs “should have no problem” obtaining a coronavirus test.
D. Coronavirus Deaths and Mortality Rates:
On April 10, Trump said that the final number of U.S. deaths could be as few as 55,000.
In mid-April, Trump predicted that the total number of casualties would be around 50,000 – 60,000.
In late April, Trump predicted that the total number of casualties would be around 60,000 – 70,000.
On May 1, Trump estimated that the total number of coronavirus deaths would be under 100,000.
Trump misleadingly compared the coronavirus deaths with the projected number of deaths, absent any mitigation.
Trump claimed that the U.S. coronavirus mortality rate is one of the best in the world.
Trump claims that the death rate is a better indicator than new cases.
Trump claimed in mid-July the death rate from coronavirus was “down tenfold.”
E. Personal Protective Equipment: General:
Trump claimed that hospitals were artificially inflating their need for equipment.
Trump claimed that no one could have predicted that the country would ever need tens of thousands of ventilators.
States and Personal Protective Equipment:
Trump claimed that, by mid-April, there was no demand for ventilators.
Trump seemed to endorse Jared Kushner’s claim that the Strategic National Stockpile was the federal government’s, and was not intended to be shared with the states.
Trump claimed that NY state had rejected recommendations to buy 16,000 ventilators at a cheap price in 2015, and NY state had established lotteries and death panels in response to the virus.
Trump claimed that NY State asked for more ventilators without realizing that eight thousand had already been delivered to the state.
Trump claimed to have never said that governors were asking for equipment they did not need.
Trump claims he did not threaten to limit help to governors who “did not treat him right.”
Trump claimed that the federal government was providing states with all the materials they need.
Trump claimed that Governor Cuomo sent sick patients back to nursing homes when they could have been treated on the USNS Comfort.
Private Sector Involvement:
Trump claimed that automotive companies were producing ventilators, per his orders, by mid-March.
F. Treatments and Vaccines: Vaccine:
Trump repeatedly claimed a vaccine would be available “soon.”
Trump said the virus would go away without a vaccine.
Hydroxychloroquine:
Trump repeatedly said that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine was proven effective in treating coronavirus.
Trump repeatedly said that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine is safe to use to treat COVID-19.
Trump denounced a report conducted at Veterans Administration hospitals, which found no evidence that hydroxychloroquine helped people, and in fact may increase likelihood of death. He also claimed it was the only study that undercut his claims regarding the drug.
Other Treatment-Related Lies:
Trump says he is “all for masks.”
Trump rejects the idea that widespread mask usage would successfully prevent the spread of the virus and claims that masks can actually cause problems and are a “double-edged sword.”
Trump later undersells the value of wearing masks, only tepidly endorsing their use.
Trump claims that governors “go by the CDC guidelines” regarding masks.
Trump said that he was being sarcastic when he asked medical experts to look into viability of injecting disinfectants to treat virus, that he had only asked medical experts to look into whether or not the sun could treat the virus, and that he was only talking about using disinfectants on hands, not to ingest.
Trump retweeted a conspiracy video that claimed that neither masks nor shutdowns were necessary to combat coronavirus, and that hydroxychloroquine is the cure for coronavirus, and later endorsed the video and said the video makers were “respected” doctors.
Trump claims that he had not been asking Dr. Birx questions about the impact of sunlight and heat, but was instead speaking to the laboratory expert about sunlight.
G. Other China-Related Lies:
Trump claimed that, although the virus spread out of China, China contained it to Wuhan.
Trump exaggerated Tim Cook’s statement that Apple production plants in China were “back to normal” at the end of February.
H. World Health Organization:
Trump claimed he never threatened to freeze WHO funding, just minutes after having made the threat.
Trump claimed that the WHO ignored the spread of the virus in Wuhan.
I. Blaming Democrats, the Obama Administration, and Vice President Biden: Obama Administration:
Trump claimed that the Obama administration had implemented a rule on testing that limited the FDA’s capacity to test.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that he inherited a flawed COVID-19 test from the Obama administration.
Trump claimed that the Obama administration left no medical supplies or ventilators in the national stockpile.
Trump claims that the Obama administration stopped testing for H1N1 because they did not want to increase the number of cases.
Vice President Biden:
Trump claimed that the Obama Administration’s response – and Vice President Biden’s response in particular – to H1N1 was a huge disaster.
Trump claimed that Vice President Biden had apologized to him for calling him Xenophobic. Trump claimed this apology took place on a Friday evening, when it wouldn’t generate any coverage.
Trump claimed that a Biden aide had made up a prediction that Trump would try to delay November’s election.
Trump baselessly claims that listening to Vice President Biden would have resulted in hundreds of thousands more deaths.
Democrats:
Trump claimed criticism regarding testing was a partisan attack, and felt it was a “personal attack.”
Trump repeatedly claims that the Democrat policy of open borders caused coronavirus.
Trump later revised this claim, baselessly stating that if the Democrats had their way and opened borders, border states would be the global epicenter of the virus.
Trump later claimed that Democrats did not take the virus seriously in February and March.
Trump has made various false claims about Pelosi’s visit to San Francisco’s Chinatown, and then claimed that she deleted her tweet about her visit to Chinatown.
Trump claims that Democrats are the ones opposing “payments” to Americans and that he supported larger payments than Democrats.
J. Pandemic and the Media:
Trump claims that the media has been unfair to him and misrepresented how his administration has handled the crisis.
Trump claims that the media has unfairly focused on the number of coronavirus cases, rather than the mortality rate.
Trump claimed “unknown sources” cited by the New York Times and Post were made up.
Trump claimed the media did not call to ask for a comment before publishing stories regarding Alex Azar.
Trump denounced the media for reporting that he and Jay Inslee had clashed on the phone or that Jay Isnlee had told him the federal government needed to step up (“We need Tom Brady”). Trump claimed that the comment was meant positively.
Trump claimed a New York Times correspondent, Michael Grynbaum, had written a positive article about him.
K. The Lockdown: General:
Trump repeatedly exaggerated how quickly the country could “open up.”
Trump claims that the country has reopened “safely” and will remain “open.”
Trump claimed that the states that did not have stay-at-home orders were “not in jeopardy.”
Trump claimed that the President has the power to decide whether or not to open up states.
Trump claimed that continued economic shutdown would result in greater number of deaths, by suicide, than Coronavirus would cause.
Trump claimed that Dr. Birx had not discouraged Americans from having dinner or cocktail parties, and was simply referring to certain states.
Trump claimed that anti-lockdown protests socially distanced, and that protestors were six feet apart.
Trump claims that Democrats only want to reimpose shutdowns to hurt Trump’s election chances.
Trump claims that states with Democratic governors are prohibiting him from holding rallies for political reasons.
Trump claimed people were getting arrested for listening to church services in their cars.
Schools:
Trump has claimed that people are opposing school reopening for political reasons.
Trump claims that “everyone” is in favor of opening schools.
Trump claims that we can safely reopen all schools.
Trump claims that keeping schools shut would be more dangerous for families.
Trump claimed that Vice President Biden does not want to open schools.
Trump attempts to discredit the CDC’s recommendations for school re-openings.
L. The Economy: General:
Trump baselessly muses that “maybe” the coronavirus improved U.S. jobs numbers.
Trump baselessly claims that the economy will be even stronger than it was prior to the virus.
Trump claims that, prior to the virus, he was paying off the national debt.
In early June, Trump claimed the economy was “rocking and rolling.”
In early July, Trump claimed the economy is “roaring back to life” like “nobody has even seen before.”
Trump claimed that he would exempt farmworkers from restrictions on immigration, because in previous instances when the border was closed, all farmers went out of business.
Trump understates coronavirus’ catastrophic impact on small businesses.
Coronavirus Relief Act:
Trump said that the Paycheck Protection Program had been administered seamlessly.
Trump claimed that he was the first President to provide paid sick leave for American workers.
Trump denied that Wells Fargo had stopped taking small business loan applications.
Trump says that Americans can safely vote in person this November.
Trump claims that absentee ballots are safer than mail-in ballots.
N. Other:
Trump floats the idea of postponing the election to protect against fraudulent election results, saying it could take “years” to determine results of election.
Trump claimed that Captain Crozier had sent the letter regarding the outbreak on the USS Roosevelt to 28 people.
Trump claimed that the outbreak on the USS Roosevelt resulted in 540 people testing positive.
Trump blamed Captain Crozier for stopping in Vietnam during the pandemic, implying that this was the reason for the outbreak on ship.
Trump exaggerates the number of people on the Grand Princess cruise, saying there were close to 5,000 people aboard.
Trump blames Black Lives Matter protests for the increase in cases.
Trump blames Mexico for the spike in coronavirus cases.
For Trump and the Republicans, the likely rise in homelessness because of mass evictions and foreclosures as a result of the economic collapse due to the coronavirus is another tool of voter suppression. Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic candidate for president, is calling for an Emergency Housing Package (c) Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic candidate for president, calls out Trump and the Republicans for sitting by as 20 million Americans who have lost their jobs as a direct result of the coronavirus pandemic, now face eviction from their apartments, foreclosure from their homes (Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin made a fortune foreclosing on people in the 2008 Great Recession). The impacts of this collapse of family finances will follow for the rest of their lives, effectively canceling out the American Dream, if families can survive at all. I would submit what seems “merely”callous and indifferent to the suffering of so many is intentional. It is yet another tool in the Trump and Republicans’ campaign to suppress votes by likely Democratic voters – the more misery the better, but also, these voters can be challenged at the polls as no longer living where they were registered and unable to receive a vote-by-mail.
In contrast, Trump has elevated housing – fair housing – into another bullhorn call-out to his base. Just as he has done to sabotage Obamacare in the midst of a pandemic, he has rolled back an Obama-era rule – Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing — that required local governments provide fair housing in order to receive federal housing funds. Trump tweet-gloated, not even bothering to code his meaning about who he was appealing to and why: “I am happy to inform all the people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that you will no longer be bothered or financially hurt by having low income housing built inyour neighborhood…Your housing prices will go up based on the market, and crime will go down. I have rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH Rule. Enjoy!”
This is a statement from Vice President Biden on what a functioning federal response to such widespread homelessness should be: pass an emergency housing relief package –Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
Today is the first day of another month where rent and mortgage payments are due for millions of Americans who are already living on the edge. It comes a day after President Trump and Leader McConnell sent the Senate home for the weekend and allowed enhanced unemployment insurance, which millions of families have been using to pay their rent and bills, to lapse. And, the day after, we found out the last three months have been the worst period for our economy in recorded history. Hundreds of thousands of small businesses have shut their doors, with minority entrepreneurs especially hard hit. More than 30 million Americans are struggling to get by as their unemployment benefits are about to get sharply cut. Over the next two months, with no federal eviction moratorium in place, as many as 20 million families could find themselves out in the street without a safe place to live.
Because Donald Trump is abdicating his responsibility to lead us out of the pandemic crisis and the economic crisis, we now face a potential housing crisis across the country.
To prevent a catastrophic rise in evictions and homelessness, President Trump must work with Congress to act swiftly and enact a broad emergency housing support program for renters, just as we would in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Such a step would get help out quickly and at scale so that millions of people aren’t evicted or forced to choose between rent and food. Congress must also provide emergency unemployment benefits, greater access to food and nutrition programs, and full subsidies to allow families to keep their health insurance, so that the loss of one family member’s job doesn’t push the family into foreclosure and on the streets. This legislation must also include the fiscal relief necessary so state and local governments can keep on payroll the first responders, public school educators, and other public servants who ensure our cities and towns are clean, safe, and running.
Combined, these steps could put the nation in a much stronger position to handle the strain the virus is putting on millions of Americans and our entire economy. They are among many others we must take.
Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic candidate for president, in contrast to Trump, has issued a roadmap to reopen public schools safely as COVID-19 cases continue to surge (c) Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
Demonstrating yet again the stark contrast between the malevolent ineptitude of Trump and the competence, care and concern of Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic candidate for president has issued his own plan to reopen schools safely in the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic. Trump’s only plan: damn the science, bully public schools to reopen or lose federal funding, impede testing and keep COVID-19 cases and fatalities secret from the public. This is from the Biden campaign: –Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
Joe Biden’s Roadmap to Reopening Schools Safely
Educators, students, and families have done an incredible job in difficult circumstances over the last four months. Everyone wants schools to fully reopen for in-person instruction. Creating the conditions to make it happen should be a top national priority. Joe Biden believes that the decision about when to reopen safely should be made by state, tribal, and local officials, based on science and in consultation with communities and tribal governments. It should be made with the safety of students and educators in mind. And, it should be made recognizing that if we do this wrong, we will put lives at risk and set our economy and our country back.
The challenge facing our schools is unprecedented. President Trump has made it much worse. We had a window to get this right. And, Trump blew it. His administration failed to heed the experts and take the steps required to reduce infections in our communities. As a result, cases have exploded. Now our window before the new school year is closing rapidly, and we are forced to grapple with reopening our schools in an environment of much greater risk to educators, students, and their families than there would have been if America had competent leadership.
Over a month ago, Biden identified key steps that Donald Trump needed to take to reopen our schools safely. Trump has taken none of them. In fact, he’s done the opposite. He has threatened to force schools to reopen for in-person instruction without the basic resources they need to keep students, educators, and communities safe. If Trump had actually done his job as President, the decisions facing our schools would look fundamentally different.
Joe Biden has a simple five-step roadmap to support local decision-making on reopening schools safely and to help students whose learning was interrupted:
Get the Virus Under Control: Months into this crisis, infection rates are spiking across the country, personal protective equipment (PPE) is still in short supply, and hospitalizations and deaths are unacceptably high. We have only weeks to go before the school year begins, and we have no plan, no leadership, and no additional resources to fight this crisis. We do not have sufficient testing, adequate contact tracing, or reliable supply chains. It is outrageous that Trump forced educators, parents, and caregivers into this situation. If we want to reopen schools safely, we need to get cases down in states and communities across America. Now. That means mask wearing and appropriate social distancing guidelines that match the virus trajectory in a community. In addition, Biden has laid out comprehensive plans on March 12, April 27, and June 11, among others, to:
Implement nationwide testing-and-tracing, including doubling the number of drive-through testing sites;
Establish a sustainable supply chain for PPE, including fully utilizing the Defense Production Act to ensure enough masks for every school in America every day;
Protect older Americans and others at high risk;
Provide small businesses with the resources they need to reopen safely.
Set National Safety Guidelines, Empower Local Decision-Making: The Trump Administration’s chaotic and politicized response has left school districts to improvise a thousand hard decisions on their own. Schools need clear, consistent, effective national guidelines, not mixed messages and political ultimatums. Biden would task the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and other federal agencies with establishing basic, objective criteria to guide state, tribal, and local officials in deciding if and how reopening can be managed safely in their communities, including:
Decisions on reopening have been tied to the level of risk and degree of viral spread in the community. Biden agrees with the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, and AASA, the School Superintendents Association, that “schools in areas with high levels of COVID-19 community spread should not be compelled to reopen against the judgement of local experts.”
Emergency funding needs have been met so that schools have the resources to reconfigure classrooms, kitchens, and other spaces, improve ventilation, and take other necessary steps to make it easier to physically distance and minimize risk of spread.
Schools have taken necessary precautions to foster a culture of health and safety and protect educators and students, including reducing class size, limiting large gatherings, and providing safe environments for eating.
Schools have ready access to enough masks and other PPE for every student and educator every day, if they need it.
Reasonable accommodations have been made for at-risk educators and students, in collaboration with educators, their unions, parents, and caregivers.
State and local officials have shared a plan for regularly communicating about school decisions and resources with parents, caregivers, educators, and the community.
The federal government has issued reopening guidelines, free from political interference, in greater detail to answer basic questions that schools have, including: How low does the community infection rate need to be to reopen and at what point should schools shut down again if cases rise? What are safe maximum class sizes? If schools cannot accommodate everyone, who should return to the classroom first? The current lack of clarity is paralyzing for schools.
Provide Emergency Funding for Public Schools and Child Care Providers: Schools urgently need emergency financial support, but what they have gotten from Trump is bluster and bullying and, worse, threats to further slash their funding. As a result of Trump’s failure to lead, states could face drastic budget shortfalls totalling $555 billion over state fiscal years of 2020-2022. Left unaddressed, these shortfalls could result in significant layoffs. According to one analysis, just a conservative 5% decrease in state education funding would result in the loss of almost 28,000 school positions, including teachers, counselors, social workers, and school psychologists.
As President, Biden will always put our children, educators, and families first. He believes public schools, especially Title I schools – should have all the resources they need to safely return to in-person instruction and support all students. Biden is:
Calling on Trump and Senate Republicans to pass the education funding in the HEROES Act, which the House passed months ago. This bill includes roughly $58 billion for local school districts to stabilize public education and save jobs. Over four months ago, Biden called for a renewable fund for state, tribal, and local governments to help prevent budget shortfalls and protect that relief from exactly the kind of political brinkmanship we are seeing from Trump and Republicans leaders today. It is past time to get it done.
Calling on the Congress to pass a separate emergency package to ensure schools have the additional resources they need to adapt effectively to COVID-19. School officials estimate that districts will need about $30 billion to put in place the changes needed to reopen safely. This package should include funding for child care providers and public schools — particularly Title I schools and Indian schools — for personal protective equipment; public health and sanitation products; custodial and health services; and alterations to building ventilation systems, classrooms, schedules, class size, and transportation. And, an additional roughly $4 billion is needed to upgrade technology and broadband. Biden has previously announced that, as President, he will ensure schools have the resources to double the number of psychologists, counselors, nurses, social workers, and other health professionals in schools so our kids get the mental health care they need. That’s more important now than ever before, as kids grapple with the stress and trauma of our economic and public health crisis.
Ensuring High-Quality Learning during the COVID-19 Pandemic: We are continuing to learn how to best support students, educators, and their families through this challenging time. Biden would mobilize a large-scale U.S. Department of Education effort to work with practitioners to develop, adopt, and share the latest tools and best practices to ensure high-equality learning during this pandemic. This effort would include:
Delivering high-quality remote and hybrid learning with a special emphasis on students with disabilities, English-language learners, and students who do not have access to specific technology, such as broadband and devices. This includes dedicated time and resources for our educators to pursue professional development opportunities tailored to the unique circumstances of this crisis.
Creating a Safer Schools Best Practices Clearinghouse to help schools and child care providers across the country and around the world share approaches, protocols, and tools for reopening safely.
Providing tools and resources for parents and other caregivers to help them make informed decisions on sending their children to school, help their children cope with the stress of this pandemic, and assist them with their children’s remote learning.
Ensuring tailored remote teaching assignments and educational plans for educators and students who are at greater risk to COVID-19 or live with a family member who is.
Working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health to share with educators and families evolving scientific insights into how COVID-19 affects children.Biden has called for scaling up COVID-19 pediatric research partnerships to address glaring gaps in our knowledge.
Closing the COVID-19 Educational Equity Gap: Despite the best efforts of educators, students, and families, this crisis, coupled with long-standing racial inequities, has led many students, especially low-income students and students of color, to struggle and fall behind. New research shows that some students could even lose an entire year of academic gains. As President, Biden would:
Direct a White House-led initiative to identify evidence-based policy solutions that address gaps in learning, mental health, social and emotional well-being, and systemic racial and socioeconomic disparities in education that the pandemic has exacerbated. Biden would invite participation from a dedicated group of health experts, including mental health professionals and neuroscientists; educators, including early educators, and their unions; school technology practitioners and experts; civil rights advocates; Indian education experts; foundations and the private sector; and families, students, and community advocates. Biden would request its recommendations on an accelerated time frame in order to provide guidance to states, tribal, and local governments as quickly as possible.
Launch a COVID-19 Educational Equity Gap Challenge Grant to encourage states and tribal governments – in partnership with the education and broader community – to develop bold plans that adopt evidence-based policy recommendations and give all of our students the support they need to succeed.
Support community schools. Community schools work with families, students, teachers and community organizations to identify families’ unmet needs and then develop a plan to leverage community resources to address these needs in the school building, turning schools into community hubs. They provide holistic services like health and nutrition, mental health, and adult education– services that are especially critical during and after COVID-19 to address the social, emotional, academic, and health needs of students in a comprehensive way. Biden will provide resources to expand this model.
Vice President Joe Biden, recognizing the nation faces yet another dire shortage of PPE as the coronavirus pandemic surges, is proposing a plan to rebuild US supply chains so the nation never faces future shortages of critical equipment (c) Karen Rubin/newssphotos-features.com.
In face of criminal lack of leadership by Trump in the midst of the worst public health crisis in a century and the worst economic condition since the Great Depression, Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, is showing what a real leader would do. With the nation facing yet another dire shortage of PPE, Biden is offering his plan to rebuild US supply chains so that the nation never faces future shortages of critical equipment. This is from the Biden campaign—Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
FACT SHEET: The Biden Plan to Rebuild U.S. Supply Chains and Ensure the U.S. Does Not Face Future Shortages of Critical Equipment
Joe Biden will work to ensure that the U.S. does not face shortages of the critical products America needs in times of crisis and to protect our national security. To combat the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden will immediately marshal all of the tools of the Federal government to secure sufficient supplies, treatments, and, as soon as possible, a vaccine to combat the pandemic. At the same time, he will implement fundamental reforms that shift production of a range of critical products back to U.S. soil, creating new jobs and protecting U.S. supply chains against national security threats.
While medical supplies and equipment are our most pressing and urgent needs, U.S. supply chain risks are not limited to these items. The U.S. needs to close supply chain vulnerabilities across a range of critical products on which the U.S. is dangerously dependent on foreign suppliers. America needs a stronger, more resilient domestic supply chain in a number of areas, including energy and grid resilience technologies, semiconductors, key electronics and related technologies, telecommunications infrastructure, and key raw materials.
The critical supplies America needs today may be different from the critical supplies needed in the future as technologies and markets evolve. That’s why Biden will institute an ongoing, comprehensive government-wide process to monitor supply chain vulnerabilities, designate vitals products where the U.S. needs to address supply chain vulnerabilities, and immediately close identified gaps. He will work collaboratively with the private sector to improve productivity and avoid unnecessary costs and bureaucracy.
The goal here is not pure self-sufficiency, but broad-based resilience. Biden’s plan will strive to ensure that America doesn’t face a shortage of vital goods — to deal with any future crisis or fundamental national need — through a combination of increased domestic production, strategic stockpiles sized to meet our needs, cracking down on anti-competitive practices that threaten supply chains, implementing smart plans to surge capacity in a time of crisis, and working closely with allies.
He will initiate this process with a 100-day review immediately upon taking office to identify critical national security risks across America’s international supply chains and will ask Congress to enact a mandatory quadrennial Critical Supply Chain Review to institute this process permanently.
As President, Joe Biden will:
Use the full power of the federal government to rebuild U.S. domestic manufacturing capacity of our supply chains for critical products.
Implement a comprehensive approach to ensure the U.S. has the critical supplies it needs for future crises and its national security
Work with allies to protect their supply chains and to open new markets to U.S. exports.
Use the full power of the Federal Government to rebuild domestic manufacturing capacity in our critical supply chains
Joe Biden will soon release a comprehensive strategy to create American jobs through modern American manufacturing. Today, he is announcing a set of targeted proposals to ensure the United States has the domestic manufacturing capacity necessary for critical supply chains. He will:
Use the Defense Production Act (DPA) to put Americans to work manufacturing critical products, including those immediately needed to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The DPA grants the President broad authority to mobilize the domestic industrial base toward emergency preparedness. The Trump administration is still dragging its feet on using the DPA to produce urgently-needed supplies to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, and has fallen far short of the domestic mobilization we need. For example, months into the crisis we still face a shortage of N95 masks. By contrast, Biden will use the DPA to direct U.S. companies to ramp up production of critical products that will be needed over the near-term. He will also use the 100-day review process to determine the best way forward over the mid- and long-term.
As President, Biden will use the DPA to its fullest extent to rebuild domestic manufacturing capacity in critical supply chains, using the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and applying them to our national needs. Biden understands that improving the resilience of U.S. supply chains requires working closely with the American private sector. As part of this effort, he will pursue competitive public-private partnerships to encourage and invest in innovative manufacturing technology and capacity.
Use federal purchasing power to bolster domestic manufacturing capacity for designated critical products. In addition to using DPA authority to ensure the U.S. prioritizes emergency preparedness, Biden will direct the federal government’s purchasing power to support manufacturing capacity for products designated as critical to U.S. national security. The government has authority in the Procurement Act of 1949, which permits the president to establish “policies and directives” for federal procurement, and Joe Biden will use that authority to build up capabilities throughout the supply chain. Biden’s use of federal purchasing power to build U.S. manufacturing capacity for critical products will focus not only on where the final product sold to the U.S. government comes from, but at the supply chains of companies that receive large federal contracts. Biden will outline a bold and specific procurement agenda in the coming days.
Build long-term supply chain resilience for pharmaceuticals: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the particular vulnerabilities the U.S. faces with its pharmaceutical and medical device supply chains. According to the FDA, more than 70% of active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) facilities that supply the U.S. market are located abroad, and U.S. pharmaceutical imports have been rising for years. A substantial amount of this production is happening in places with labor costs comparable to the U.S.
Meanwhile, medicines remain far more expensive in the U.S. than in many countries in part because drug makers fail to pass any saving on to consumers. Given the world-class productivity of American manufacturers combined with a robust set of measures to make medicines more affordable for families, such as allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug costs, we should be able to increase American production and ensure the security of medical supply chains without raising prices for consumers. Moreover, Biden has offered a comprehensive healthcare plan that will reduce medical costs for millions of Americans while guaranteeing expanded healthcare coverage.
As President, Joe Biden will:
Use BARDA to spur medical production: Biden will use the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which has received billions of dollars to combat COVID-19, to ensure adequate production of vaccines and other medical countermeasures to address COVID-19. Biden will ensure that BARDA engages in science-based purchasing decisions and that it puts Americans to work rebuilding U.S. medical production capabilities by providing incentives for the production of vaccines and other medicines in the U.S. Biden is also prepared to use other federal authorities, including direct compulsory licensing of vaccines where companies are slow in producing them or are charging excessive prices, to rapidly scale up vaccine production as needed.
Leverage Federal health care purchases: Biden will work to ensure that the U.S. leverages the fact that it is the largest purchasers of health care–between Medicare, Medicaid, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and other health programs as well as Federal procurement more generally–to encourage pharmaceutical companies to make key drugs, drug inputs, and medical devices in the United States while ensuring fair and transparent pricing. He will require the FDA Commissioner, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Defense to identify critical drugs and medical products and create a market for American manufacturing by directing federal agencies to purchase versions of these drugs that are made in the U.S. and that use U.S.-made source ingredients. Biden will take steps to ensure that these measures do not increase the out-of-pocket drug costs for Americans.
Ensure the U.S. tax code encourages on-shoring of pharmaceutical supply chains: Pharmaceutical offshoring has been heavily driven by tax code provisions that have encouraged companies to locate pharmaceutical production in low-tax countries even where those countries have labor and other costs comparable to the U.S. Biden will eliminate Trump Administration tax incentives for offshoring and pursue other tax code changes that will encourage pharmaceutical production in the U.S.
Implement a comprehensive approach to ensuring that the U.S. has the critical supplies it needs
Much as the Department of Defense periodically studies defense supply chains and pursues systematic policies to close vulnerabilities, Biden will launch a comprehensive review of U.S supply chain vulnerabilities and implement a national strategy to close them. He will sign a comprehensive Executive Order to inventory U.S. supply chain vulnerabilities, directing relevant agencies to identify the specific critical products where the U.S. faces national security supply chain vulnerabilities and to address these weaknesses immediately. And he will work with the Congress to pass a law making this process permanent as part of a quadrennial Critical Supply Chain Review that will include updating the list of critical products that will be the focus of supply chain security planning.
Biden will ensure that the U.S. has adequate stockpiles of critical supplies in place for future crises, manufactured by American workers in the United States to the greatest extent possible. Our country should not face shortages in the future like those we are facing today under Trump.
Increase federal stockpiles: Biden will increase U.S. strategic stockpiles of medical supplies and other critical goods while using federal procurement authorities to ensure that stockpiled products are made in the U.S. to the greatest extent possible, thereby creating an incentive for on-shoring production of those goods.
Require companies to develop plans to address potential supply chain disruptions for critical products. Biden will work with Congress and direct regulatory agencies to require companies that manufacture, distribute, and use designated critical products in the U.S. to regularly identify potential supply chain vulnerabilities and develop plans for addressing them. Where necessary to protect critical infrastructure and supplies, he will impose targeted restrictions on imports from nations such as China and Russia that pose national security threats.
Promote surge manufacturing capacity. Biden will work with Congress and the private sector to develop standing plans to enable surge manufacturing capacity in the United States for key critical products. This will include:
Compensating companies where necessary for maintaining excess production capacity and inventory for designated critical products;
Encouraging companies to create databases of product designs for supplies that might be needed during a national crisis;
Using legal authorities during crises to ensure product designs and patents can be licensed and utilized quickly if needed to ramp up production in the U.S.; and
Pursuing public-private partnerships to improve manufacturing capacity. The National Network for Manufacturing Innovation initiative (NNMI) put in place by the Obama-Biden administration, and now receiving bipartisan support, is one example of such a program.
Invest in a new Critical Supply Chains Workforce: Joe Biden knows that to make critical supplies in the U.S. over the long term, we need a skilled workforce that can produce them. Biden will create a new Critical Supply Chains Workforce Development Fund that will invest in the workforce skills needed to help bring back manufacturing of key supply chain products and components. He will partner with state, local, and tribal governments to maintain adequate base production capacity in every region of the country and to put in place executive functions that have clear chains of command. This will ensure that that in future times of crisis the U.S. will be able to quickly ramp up production, rather than the chaotic, belated, and largely failed efforts we have seen under the Trump Administration to secure badly needed medical gear, including personal protective equipment.
Create new incentives to spur domestic production of critical products in the United States: Biden will work with Congress, states, tribes, and localities to provide targeted investments and incentives for companies to manufacture designated critical products in the U.S. This will include new targeted financial incentives, including tax credits, investments, matching funds for state and local incentives, R&D support, and other incentives to encourage the production of designated critical materials such as semiconductors in the United States.
Work with allies to protect their supply chains and to open new markets to U.S. exports
Instead of insulting our allies and undermining American global leadership, Biden will engage with our closest partners so that together we can build stronger, more resilient supply chains and economies in the face of 21st century risks. Just like the United States itself, no U.S. ally should be dependent on critical supplies from countries like China and Russia. That means developing new approaches on supply chain security — both individually and collectively — and updating trade rules to ensure we have strong understandings with our allies on how to best ensure supply chain security for all of us. As president, Joe Biden will:
Take action against our competitors when they refuse to honor trade agreements: U.S. manufacturers rely on raw materials like cobalt, copper, graphite, and tin to make a range of products, but foreign governments sometimes take illegal steps to keep these materials away from U.S. companies. China, for example, has a history of levying a tax on raw material shipments to U.S. producers, while allowing its companies to receive the material at cost—putting U.S. companies at a steep disadvantage. Biden will hold our competitors accountable when it comes to trading in raw materials, giving our manufacturers the right to purchase critical materials at the same price as foreign companies.
Deploy trade policy tools and regulations to create new markets for U.S.-made critical products. Under Biden, the United States will not just have greater supply chain security itself; our new production capacity will also result in greater U.S. export capacity, creating new opportunities for U.S. workers and businesses while also helping more parts of the world reduce their own over-reliance on countries like China. This is a win-win for the U.S. and the world.
DonaldTrump may bandy around a “Make America Great” slogan, but Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has a plan for “Made in All of America,” to resuscitate the economy after the debilitating effects of the coronavirus pandemic, decrease America’s dependence on foreign supply chains, innovate, and restore America’s global leadership in the 21st century. The essence includes Buy American, Made in America, Innovate in America, Invest in America, Stand up for America and Supply America. And he has the experience of rescuing the economy from the brink of a Great Depression. This is from the Biden campaign –Karen Rubin, [email protected]
Vice President Joe Biden will mobilize the talent, grit, and innovation of the American people and the full power of the federal government to bolster American industrial and technological strength and ensure the future is “made in all of America” by all of America’s workers. Biden believes that American workers can out-compete anyone, but their government needs to fight for them.
Biden does not accept the defeatist view that the forces of automation and globalization render us helpless to retain well-paid union jobs and create more of them here in America. He does not buy for one second that the vitality of U.S. manufacturing is a thing of the past. U.S. manufacturing was the Arsenal of Democracy in World War II, and must be part of the Arsenal of American Prosperity today, helping fuel an economic recovery for working families.
The American story has always been deeply rooted in our ability to reinvent ourselves in the face of new challenges. At key moments in our history, the federal government, private sector, and above all American workers and working families have mobilized to unleash eras of innovation and shared prosperity. This partnership propelled us to the moon, to transformative treatments for HIV/AIDS and other diseases, to the creation of the internet, and more. But President Trump has denied science, under-funded research and development, and implemented policies that encourage more manufacturing to move overseas.
If we make smart investments in manufacturing and technology, give our workers and companies the tools they need to compete, use taxpayer dollars to buy American and spark American innovation, stand up to the Chinese government’s abuses, insist on fair trade, and extend opportunity to all Americans, many of the products that are being made abroad could be made here today. And, if we do these things with an unwavering commitment to bolstering American industrial strength, which we will power using clean energy that we also harvest here at home, we will also lead in making the cutting-edge products and services of tomorrow. Biden will do more than bring back the jobs lost due to COVID-19 and Trump’s incompetence, he will create millions of new manufacturing and innovation jobs throughout all of America.
These will be high-quality, high-skill, safe jobs with the choice to join a union — jobs that will grow a stronger, more inclusive middle class. Biden will include in the economic recovery legislation he sends to Congress a series of policies to build worker power to raise wages and secure stronger benefits. This legislation will make it easier for workers to organize a union and bargain collectively with their employers by including the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, card check, union and bargaining rights for public service workers, and a broad definition of “employee” and tough enforcement to end the misclassification of workers as independent contractors. It will also go further than the PRO Act by holding company executives personally liable when they interfere with organizing efforts.
Donald Trump’s main manufacturing and innovation strategy is trickle-down economics that works for corporate executives and Wall Street investors, but not working families. He gave huge tax cuts to the largest multinationals with no requirement that they invest in the United States or favor U.S. jobs over offshoring. He pursued a trade strategy that prioritizes access for big multinational banks to China’s market but has done next to nothing to curb Chinese government trade abuses that hurt U.S. workers. The results have been predictable:
The Trump tax cut encouraged offshoring and investment overseas – not in the United States. Foreign investment was outpacing domestic investment.
In the first 18 months of Trump’s presidency, the rate of federal contractors offshoring jobs more than doubled.
In 2018, stock buybacks were at record highs and corporate tax payments were at record lows.
In 2019, U.S. manufacturing was in recession, and Trump’s much vaunted China trade strategy ended up contributing to a decline in American manufacturing exports.
Biden’s comprehensive manufacturing and innovation strategy will marshall the resources of the federal government in ways that we have not seen since World War II. Together, the following six lines of effort will remake American manufacturing and innovation so that the future is made in America by all of America’s workers:
1. BUY AMERICAN. Make “Buy American” Real and Make a $400 billion Procurement Investment that together with the Biden clean energy and infrastructure plan will power new demand for American products, materials, and services and ensure that they are shipped on U.S.-flagged cargo carriers.
2. MAKE IT IN AMERICA.Retool and Revitalize American Manufacturers, with a particular focus on smaller manufacturers and those owned by women and people of color, through specific incentives, additional resources, and new financing tools.
3. INNOVATE IN AMERICA.Make a New $300 Billion Investment in Research and Development (R&D) and Breakthrough Technologies — from electric vehicle technology to lightweight materials to 5G and artificial intelligence — to unleash high-quality job creation in high-value manufacturing and technology.
4. INVEST IN ALL OF AMERICA.Ensure Investments Reach All of America so we draw on the full talents and invest in the potential of all our communities and workers. America is not at full strength when investments, venture capital, educational opportunities and paths to good jobs are limited by race, zip code, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion or national origin. Biden will ensure that the major public investments in his plan — procurement, R&D, infrastructure, training, and education — reach all Americans across all states and regions, including urban and rural communities, with historic investments in communities of color and an emphasis on small businesses.
5. STAND UP FOR AMERICA.Pursue a Pro-American Worker Tax and Trade Strategy to fix the harmful policies of the Trump Administration and give our manufacturers and workers the fair shot they need to compete for jobs and market share.
6. SUPPLY AMERICA.Bring Back Critical Supply Chains to America so we aren’t dependent on China or any other country for the production of critical goods in a crisis.
In addition to bringing back the jobs lost this year, Joe Biden’s plan to ensure the future is made in all of America will help create at least 5 million new jobs in manufacturing and innovation.
BUY AMERICAN: MAKE “BUY AMERICAN” REAL AND MAKE A HISTORIC PROCUREMENT INVESTMENT IN AMERICAN PRODUCTS, SERVICES, SUPPLY CHAINS, AND TRANSPORTATION OF GOODS
Biden will use the government’s purchasing power to Buy American, boosting U.S. industries through a historic procurement investment he is announcing today and an ambitious extension of his infrastructure and clean energy plans that he will announce soon.
Make Buy American Real
Biden starts with a pretty basic idea – when we spend taxpayer money, we should buy American products and support American jobs. Almost 90 years ago, Congress passed the Buy American Act to advance this basic idea. But we have never fully lived up to it.
For decades, big corporations and special interests have fought for loopholes that redirect taxpayer dollars to foreign companies. The result: tens of billions of taxpayer dollars each year go to support foreign jobs and to bolster foreign industries. In 2018 alone, the Department of Defense (DOD) spent $3 billion on foreign construction contracts, leaving American steel and iron out in the cold, and nearly $300 million on foreign engines and vehicles instead of buying from American companies and putting Americans to work.
Trump likes to talk about Buy American – but his actions have made matters worse:
During the first 18 months of his presidency, the annual rate at which major federal contractors offshored jobs more than doubled.
On his watch, government contracts awarded directly to foreign companies are up 30%.
Our military has become more reliant on foreign suppliers, increasing DOD foreign contracts 12%.
His corporate tax cut is handing taxpayer money to big companies that are still offshoring their production.
Biden will make a national commitment to Buy American – and make this promise real, not just rhetoric. He will:
Tighten domestic content rules. Today, loopholes in the law allow products to be stamped “made in America” for purposes of federal procurement even if barely 51% of the materials used to produce them are domestically made. Biden will tighten these rules to require more legitimate American content — so when we deem something made in America, it reflects the work and output of American workers.
Crack down on waivers to Buy American requirements. Too often, Buy American operates like a suggestion, not a requirement. Procurement officers within federal Agencies can waive Buy American rules without explanation or scrutiny. Biden will close these waiver loopholes. First, he will establish a transparent process so that any time a federal contractor requests a waiver based on a claim that something can’t be made in America, it will be published on a website for all potential bidders and relevant stakeholders (like labor unions) to see. Second, he will use expanded Manufacturing Extension Partnerships together with new efforts to identify firms — particularly small businesses and those owned by women and people of color — that have the capability to fill these procurement needs, and provide direct support so that they can raise their hand and have a shot at stepping up to make it here. Biden successfully deployed this approach through the Transportation Department during the Recovery Act, and will extend it to all of government as President.
End false advertising. Biden will also crack down on companies that label products as Made in America even if they’re coming from China or elsewhere. For example, a company selling deployment bags to active-duty troops falsely claimed its products were Made in America, when in reality they came from China. And when an American competitor filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, the Trump Administration imposed no penalties.
Extend Buy American to other forms of government assistance. For example, when the government is investing in research and development, it should be supporting manufacturing and sourcing in America. No more “invent it here, make it there.” Taxpayer-funded research investments in the 20th century laid the foundation for MRI technologies, yet some of the companies directly benefiting from these innovations are moving MRI production to China. If companies benefit from taxpayer-funded research that leads to new products and profits, those products should be made in the U.S. or the company should reimburse the government for its support. The days of taxpayer benefits going to companies that seek to outsource jobs or avoid paying their fair share of taxes are over.
Strengthen and enforce Buy America. Like Buy American, Buy America provisions – which require that all of the steel, iron, and manufactured products used in transportation projects are melted, mined, and manufactured in the U.S. – are critical for the U.S. manufacturing industry. As part of its historic investment in infrastructure, Biden will strengthen and enforce Buy America.
Update the trade rules for Buy American: Biden will work with allies to modernize international trade rules and associated domestic regulations regarding government procurement to make sure that the U.S. and allies can use their own taxpayer dollars to spur investment in their own countries.
Ship American. The U.S.-flag Merchant Marine fleet and the men and women who operate U.S.-flag ships are crucial to America’s national security, our international trade relationships, and economic development. For this reason, Biden has been a consistent and strong advocate for the Jones Act and its mandate that only U.S.-flag vessels carry cargo between U.S. ports. He will take steps to ensure American cargo is carried on U.S.-flag ships, leading to additional demand for American-made ships and U.S. merchant mariners.
Make A Historic Procurement Investment
Ensuring that our existing taxpayer dollars support American jobs is a crucial first step, but to truly rebuild our industrial base, we need to go further – targeting more federal purchases and more R&D investment to unleash American industry and innovation going forward.
In this time of crisis, Biden will invest $400 billion in his first term in additional federal purchases of products made by American workers, with transparent, targeted investments that unleash new demand for domestic goods and services and create American jobs. This will be the largest mobilization of public investments in procurement, infrastructure and R&D since WWII.
History has shown that when the government commits to make significant purchases in targeted, tradable sectors, it positions U.S. manufacturers to create good American jobs by supplying our own communities and selling more products to the rest of the world. But outside the context of war, we have not historically used our federal purchasing power to aggressively promote U.S. national interests.
These procurement commitments will provide a strong, stable source of demand for products made by American workers and supply chains composed of American small businesses. These commitments will grow new companies and ensure existing companies that employ Americans thrive in vital sectors from steel and cars to robotics and biotechnology. They will increase our industrial strength so we can win in growing global export markets. Specifically, Biden will:
Commit to purchasing tens of billions of dollars of clean vehicles and products to support the expansion of clean energy generation capacity, ensuring we are on the forefront of the clean energy export markets of the future. Other countries should be buying the next generation of battery technology and electric vehicles manufactured by American workers.
Commit to purchasing American steel, cement, concrete, building materials, and equipment, and in the process not only help rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and retrofit our buildings, but position our domestic companies to lead in resilient, sustainable production for the future.
Commit to forward purchases of critical medical supplies and pharmaceuticals, ensuring sufficient stockpiles to weather any crisis—and that Americans get the best possible care.
Commit to future purchases in advanced industries like cutting-edge telecommunications and artificial intelligence, not only creating new, lasting American jobs, but protecting our intellectual property and national security from threats from American adversaries that have gone unaddressed by Trump.
As called for in his plan to strengthen worker organizing, collective bargaining, and unions, Biden will require that companies receiving procurement contracts are using taxpayer dollars to support good American jobs, including a commitment to pay at least $15 per hour, provide paid leave, maintain fair overtime and scheduling practices, and guarantee a choice to join a union and bargain collectively.
Biden’s historic procurement effort will be designed to support small businesses and those owned by women and people of color. Just as he did during the Recovery Act—which substantially increased the share of federal contracts awarded to small businesses—Biden is committed to applying the Federal Government’s goal of ensuring that at least 23% of federal contracts get awarded to small businesses. He will implement a multi-pronged small business contracting strategy that includes formula-based awards, widespread outreach and counseling to small businesses owners, and transparent monitoring of contract awards. And he will build on the efforts of the Obama-Biden Administration by launching a new Federal Procurement Center — a first-of-its-kind program to help minority-owned firms apply for and win federal government contracts. President Trump has proposed slashing the funding and even terminating the Minority Business Development Agency and its programs. Biden will do the opposite.
MAKE IT IN AMERICA: RETOOL AND REVITALIZE THE BACKBONE OF AMERICAN MANUFACTURING TO WIN THE JOBS OF TODAY AND TOMORROW
The dramatic increase in demand from the largest combined infrastructure (already announced), procurement (see above), and R&D (see below) public investment since WWII will power economic recovery, accelerate job creation, and jumpstart the modernization and revitalization of American manufacturing. A McKinsey study supports the notion that the type of comprehensive strategy Biden is proposing could lead to 2 million more manufacturing jobs and $500 billion in additional annual GDP by 2025.
Biden will put a special focus on the backbone of American manufacturing — the thousands of small and medium-sized manufacturers throughout the country. He saw firsthand through the rescue of the American auto industry in 2009 that these small and medium-sized manufacturers are critical to jobs, innovation, and ensuring that the future is made in America.
While the Trump Administration has created huge new programs for any large multinational corporation to get cheap capital with no job commitments – it has no strategy to help smaller manufacturers invest and stay competitive. By contrast, Biden will:
Provide Capital for Small-Medium Manufacturers to Invest and Compete: Biden will establish a credit facility to supply capital, especially to smaller manufacturers, so that our aging factories can modernize, compete, and reduce carbon. Low-cost financing for manufacturing investment — including for those struggling with the harms of the COVID-19 crisis – will ensure American manufacturers can invest in the new equipment they need to compete today while supporting a sustainable future.
Quadruple the Manufacturing Extension Partnership to help America’s small and medium-sized manufacturers compete for Buy American contracts and modernize: When large contractors claim they need “Buy American” waivers because they can’t find a U.S. manufacturer, these MEPs help small and medium-sized manufacturers compete for those contracts. Trump tried to eliminate this program; Biden will quadruple it.
Pass a Manufacturing Tax Credit to Retool and Revitalize: While Trump’s tax breaks provide giveaways even if companies offshore or move investment overseas, Biden will provide a special Manufacturing Communities Tax Credit that promotes revitalizing, renovating, and modernizing existing – or recently closed down – facilities. Projects receiving the credit will have to benefit local workers and communities by meeting strong labor standards, including paying workers a prevailing wage, employing workers trained in registered apprenticeship programs, and aiming to utilize Project Labor and Community Workforce Agreements. Because Biden understands that investing in clean energy jobs will drive the strength and competitiveness of our manufacturing sector – as part of the Clean Energy component of his jobs and recovery plan, Biden will expand and extend tax credits that will turbo-charge growth in American manufacturing
Expand Manufacturing Innovation Partnerships: Biden’s manufacturing and R&D strategy will build on the successful efforts of the Obama-Biden Administration and those of Senator Sherrod Brown and others to connect research universities — including HBCUs, Hispanic Serving Institutions, and other minority-serving institutions — community colleges, manufacturing institutes, and employers, unions, and state, local, and tribal governments. These historic investments will connect workers and manufacturers of all sizes to the know-how and technologies needed to compete and win.
Joe Biden’s plan will ensure the American Auto Industry Wins the 21st Century: During the Great Recession, Biden played a critical role in saving and reviving the American auto industry and saving more than a million American auto jobs. He has always understood that the auto industry is the heart of American manufacturing and must remain the global leader for generations to come. He recognizes that the auto industry not only supports a wide range of U.S. manufacturing capability, from steel and aluminum to electrical components and semiconductors, it is also critical to our clean energy future. Even before COVID-19 hit, auto and auto-part manufacturing growth under Obama-Biden was about three times greater than under Trump, nine times greater in Ohio, while states like Michigan actually lost auto manufacturing jobs jobs under Trump’s watch. Every plank of the Biden manufacturing and innovation plan will strengthen both the auto jobs of today and tomorrow. Bold federal procurement and Buy American provisions will create near-term demand for U.S. auto manufacturing and bring back jobs. Investments in technology and innovation will spur U.S. production of new energy and safety technologies, thus increasing the domestic content in U.S. vehicles. Dedicated grants and funding to help manufacturers retool and build new factories will help ensure U.S. global leadership in electric vehicle manufacturing, including EV components and batteries. Biden will announce additional detail on his plan to support auto jobs in the weeks ahead.
INNOVATE IN AMERICA: A MAJOR INVESTMENT IN FEDERALLY FUNDED R&D ACROSS ALL 50 STATES
A successful plan to ensure a future made in America means the United States must have a strategy to win not just the jobs of today – but the jobs and industries of tomorrow. That requires fighting back against unfair trade practices and the theft of American intellectual property, as well as making a national commitment to get off the sidelines as competitors are making aggressive public investments in science and technology to take over global leadership in the most advanced technologies.
Joe Biden is proposing a dramatic, accelerated Research & Development investment of $300 billion over 4 years to create millions of good jobs today, and to secure our global leadership in the most critical and competitive new industries and technologies. Credible estimates indicate that this level of investment could help create 3 million jobs or more.
China is on track to surpass the US in R&D. China’s total R&D expenditures have increased nearly 30-fold from 1991 to 2016. By some estimates, China will overtake the US in R&D spending in 2020. And, as part of China’s “Made in China 2025” plan, China’s government has launched funds to increase manufacturing and technological innovation in key industries, including battery technology, artificial intelligence, and 5G. China’s government is actively investing in research and commercialization across these types of important technology areas, in an effort to overtake American technological primacy and dominate future industries.
Declines in Federal R&D spending have contributed to a hollowing out of the American middle class. The Trump White House and Republicans in Congress have forgotten that major investments in federal R&D not only drove U.S. industrial and technological leadership, but created millions of good-paying middle class jobs. The fight for our future requires us to return to that winning commitment from our past. In 1964, public federal R&D support was 2% of GDP, compared to only 0.7% today. This difference amounts to nearly $250 billion less annually in federal R&D spending. MIT professors Simon Johnson and Jonathan Gruber have found that declining public investment has also led to slow productivity and wage growth.
The $300 billion in innovation funding will power home-grown industries that can lead the world and create jobs in advanced materials, health and medicine, biotechnology, clean energy, autos, aerospace, artificial intelligence, telecommunications, and more. Specifically, Biden will allocate funding to:
Major increases in direct federal R&D spending, including new National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, Biden’s new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and other peer-reviewed science research grants to colleges and universities.
New breakthrough technology R&D programs to direct investments to key technologies in support of U.S. competitiveness – including 5G, artificial intelligence, advanced materials, biotechnology, and clean vehicles.
Competitive capital financing to encourage small businesses to commercialize cutting-edge technology, such as a scaled-up version of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, “America’s seed fund,” which provides capital to small businesses pursuing R&D commercialization in concert with research institutions.
State-of-the-art workforce skill development, such as funds for the creation or expansion of technical training programs around digital, statistical, and technology skills, funded by the Labor Department. This will increase pathways for those – including women and workers of color — who are too often under-represented in critical technology jobs.
Infrastructure for educational institutions and partners to expand research, such as building new research labs, buying modern manufacturing equipment, or creating new business parks.
As part of this historic R&D investment, Joe Biden will work to ensure that technological change benefits workers, creates jobs, and strengthens the middle class. He will:
Ensure that taxpayers benefit from the upside of federal research dollars that create profitable inventions. U.S. taxpayers should benefit from the upside of federal investments that result in profitable inventions underwritten by federal funds. Biden will strengthen existing federal rights to ensure that the U.S. government captures a share of the royalties of high-profitable products developed with federal R&D funding.
Ensure workers have a voice in innovation and are first in line to benefit. As president, Biden will ensure that employers receiving federal funds give all affected employees advance notice of technology changes and automation in the workplace, put their employees at the front of the line for new jobs, and offer paid skills training so that employees can succeed in new jobs. And, he will ensure employers discuss workplace technology changes with their employees and their unions and bargain over protections against employees being displaced.
INVEST IN ALL OF AMERICA: ENSURE WE DRAW ON THE FULL TALENTS AND INVEST IN THE POTENTIAL OF ALL OUR COMMUNITIES AND WORKERS
A strategy to ensure the future is made in America will not work unless we have a dramatic new commitment to ensure we are investing in – and drawing on the talents of – all of America. Today, we fall short in too many ways. We fail to provide meaningful investment in R&D and venture capital to all regions of our nation and we fail to give too many Americans – especially those of color or from lower-income urban and rural communities – the full opportunities they deserve to have pathways to good jobs and careers. America is not at full strength when investments, venture capital, educational opportunities, and paths to good jobs are limited by race, zip codes, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion, and national origin.
The Biden plan will ensure major research, public investment, and training and education for manufacturing and innovation jobs goes to all parts of America, both urban and rural communities, with historic investments in communities of color.
Joe Biden’s R&D Challenge for All of America
The economic opportunities from investment in innovation have not been shared throughout the U.S. Twenty five percent of venture capital investment is concentrated in the San Francisco area, and 75% flows to just three states: California, New York, and Massachusetts. Female entrepreneurs only receive 16% of all venture capital dollars. Only 3% go to start-ups with Black or Latino founders. As experts from MIT and Brookings have argued, there are a significant number of diverse communities across every region of the country that could become new centers of job-creating innovation and production.
We cannot lead the world if we leave too much of our talent sitting on the bench. Biden will diversify this bold new innovation investment so it supports jobs, small businesses, and entrepreneurs in every part of the United States. He will:
Direct new federal investments to more than 50 communities across our nation that have the capabilities but have too often been overlooked, in both rural and urban areas. He will invest in new technology hubs that bring together this research and development investment with workforce training and education and small and medium-sized businesses, resulting in new innovations from more places, which means stronger communities and job creation. These investments will build on successful programs like Detroit’s LIFT and Youngstown’s “America Makes,” each of which has helped start innovative new start-ups and commercialize cutting-edge technologies.
Guarantee that funding is equitably allocated so that women and communities of color receive their fair share of investment dollars. Biden will ensure that federal research and procurement dollars are awarded fairly and will apply the principles of Congressman Jim Clyburn’s 10-20-30 plan to ensure that help goes to high-poverty areas that have long suffered disinvestment. And, he’ll invest in the diverse talent at Historically Black College and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and Minority Serving Institutions to solve the country’s most pressing problems, including by (a) creating at least 200 new centers of excellence that serve as research incubators and connect students underrepresented in fields critical to our nation’s future, (b) dedicating additional and increased priority funding streams at federal agencies for grants and contracts for HBCUs and MSIs, and c) requiring any federal research grants to universities with an endowment of over $1 billion to form a meaningful partnership and enter into a 10% minimum subcontract with an HBCU, TCU, or MSI. Biden will also require that competitive grant programs give similar universities the opportunity to compete against each other, for example, ensuring that HBCUs only compete against HBCUs.
Joe Biden’s Job and Educational Opportunity Challenge for All of America
The need to draw on the talents of all of America is even more pronounced when it comes to building our innovation and manufacturing workforce. Yet today, opportunity is unevenly distributed. Too few women and people of color have been provided with the pathways to the high-skill, high wage, in-demand jobs that STEM careers offer, including in manufacturing and innovation. And too many skilled workers in manufacturing do not get the full chance to increasingly upgrade their skills and be first in line for new jobs in changing industries.
Biden’s plan to invest in career and technical education for high school students and his plan for free high-quality training programs and community colleges and free tuition for 4-year degrees for families earning less than $125,000 will go a long way toward building the workforce for a major expansion in manufacturing and innovation jobs.
He will go further, investing $50 billion in high-quality training programs that give workers a chance to earn an industry-recognized credential without debt. As part of this commitment, Biden will:
Create and expand community college-business-union partnerships to develop effective training programs. Building on successes in the Obama-Biden Administration, Biden will invest in partnerships between community colleges and their faculty, businesses, unions, state, local, and tribal governments, universities, and high schools and their instructors to identify in-demand knowledge and skills in a community and develop or modernize training programs. These programs – which could be as short as a few months or as long as two years – will lead to a relevant, high-demand industry-recognized credential.
Scale up work-based learning programs with a focus on building a diverse workforce, through opportunities like registered apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeship programs and other labor-management training programs. Biden will work with unions to bring forward a new generation of registered apprenticeships in fields ranging from technology to manufacturing to care work. These high-quality registered apprenticeships will allow workers who have lost their jobs as a result of this crisis or young people and others who are entering a weak job market to train to enter the jobs of the future while earning a decent income. Registered apprenticeship programs like the innovative Industrial Manufacturing Technician Apprenticeship train workers for specialized manufacturing jobs with 18 months of work-based learning and a few technical college classes. Biden also will invest in pre-apprenticeship programs that have a partnership with a registered apprenticeship program, with a focus on ensuring these programs provide a pathway to high-quality employment opportunities for a diverse workforce, including both racial and gender diversity.
Help develop pathways for diverse workers to access training and career opportunities. A study of Labor Department-funded individual career services – which included assistance looking for a job, help developing career plans, and one-on-one career coaching – found that earnings for workers who were provided these services increased 7 to 20%. Biden will ensure these services are universally available to all workers and people entering the workforce who need them. And, he will increase funding for community-based and proven organizations that help women and people of color access high-quality training and job opportunities.
Extend Unemployment Insurance benefits for the duration of training, up-skilling, and reskilling programs while unemployment rates are elevated, so that millions of people can get skills for new technology, innovation, trades, and other jobs, in all parts of America.
In order to ensure the United States is as competitive as possible, we need to tap into all of the talent across our country, including women and communities of color. That’s why Biden’s plan to invest over $70 billion in Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and Minority-Serving Institutions is a key piece of his manufacturing and innovation workforce strategy. In addition to directing additional federal research dollars to these schools and requiring that setting aside competitive grant dollars that for HBCUs, TCUs, and MSIs that only similar universities compete over, Biden will invest $35 billion in HBCUs, TCUs, and MSIs to create research centers of excellence, build high-tech labs and other facilities, and strengthen graduate programs in fields including STEM. Biden will also tackle workplace discrimination and harassment that keeps so many women, especially women of color, from earning equal pay or fully realizing their professional goals.
A PRO-AMERICAN-WORKER TAX AND TRADE STRATEGY
American workers and businesses can out-compete anyone, hands-down. But their government needs to fight for them. Biden will fight for every American job in the tough competition for jobs and markets – especially against unfair foreign practices. The President needs to stand with American workers and communities, not with wealthy corporations or the foreign governments that are subsidizing and protecting their businesses.
That’s one of the problems with Trump. When push comes to shove, Trump sides with corporate interests against workers, their unions, and their communities. And he rewards corporations and their executives for abandoning American workers and moving jobs overseas — rather than holding them accountable to create, maintain, and bring back jobs to the U.S.
President Trump’s 2017 tax plan showered Wall Street and powerful multinational corporations with incentives to move jobs and production overseas. And Trump’s go-it-alone trade war and empty “phase one” deal with China has been an unmitigated disaster, inflicting maximum pain on American workers and farmers, while doing nothing to curb Beijing’s trade abuses. In negotiating with China’s government, Trump spent more energy fighting for big corporations than he did fighting for American workers. To this day, China’s government continues its trade abuses and is failing to live up to its commitments.
The goal of every decision about trade must be to build the American middle class, create jobs, raise wages, and strengthen communities. To stand up for American workers, Biden’s tax and trade strategy will take a number of steps, including:
Take aggressive trade enforcement actions against China or any other country seeking to undercut American manufacturing through unfair practices, including currency manipulation, anti-competitive dumping, state-owned company abuses, or unfair subsidies.
Rally our allies in a coordinated effort to pressure the Chinese government and other trade abusers to follow the rules and hold them to account when they do not. Rather than picking fights with our allies and undermining respect for America, Biden will work with our closest allies, mobilizing more than half the world’s economy to better deliver for our workers. Biden will focus our allies on addressing overcapacity in industries, ranging from steel and aluminum to fiber optics to shipbuilding and other sectors, and focus on the key contributor to the problem – China’s government.
Confront foreign efforts to steal American intellectual property. China’s government and other state-led actors have engaged in an assault on American creativity. From cyberattacks to forced technology transfer to talent acquisition, American ingenuity and taxpayer investments are too often fueling the advances in other nations. And when it comes to China, under Trump’s “phase one” deal all those practices continue. The piecemeal and ineffective approach of the Trump Administration will be replaced with a coordinated and effective strategy.
Address state-sponsored cyber espionage against American companies. Trump allowed a landmark 2015 agreement negotiated by the Obama-Biden administration to lapse, dramatically increasing China’s state-sponsored cyber espionage against U.S. companies. Biden will set forth clear demands and specific consequences if China’s government does not cease cyber espionage against U.S. businesses, and will develop new sanctions authorities against Chinese firms that steal U.S. technology that cut them off from accessing the U.S. market and financial system.
Establish a “claw-back” provision to force a company to return public investments and tax benefits when they close down jobs here and send them overseas.
Apply a carbon adjustment fee against countries that are failing to meet their Paris Climate commitments to make sure that they are forced to internalize the environmental costs they’re now imposing on the rest of the world. This adjustment stops polluting countries from undermining our workers and manufacturers, ensuring we can lead, compete, and win as we harness the opportunity of a clean energy economy achieving net zero emissions by 2050.
Reverse tax policies that encourage outsourcing: Biden will end incentives in the Trump tax giveaway that allow multinationals to dramatically lower taxes on income earned overseas and allow the largest, most profitable companies to pay no tax at all. And, Biden will confront global tax secrecy and avoidance, taking on individuals and businesses that stash their profits in tax havens to avoid paying their fair share while tightening anti-inversion rules that Obama-Biden put in place and which Trump has sought to weaken.
Support strong and independent trade unions here in the United States and in every one of our trading partners. Unions are essential to democracy, unions are essential to economic stability, unions are essential for building markets for American products, and unions are the right thing to do — everywhere in the world. Biden will enforce existing labor provisions and aggressively push for strong and enforceable labor provisions in any trade deal his administration negotiates — and not sign a deal unless it has those provisions.
SUPPLY AMERICA: BRING BACK CRITICAL SUPPLY CHAINS TO AMERICA
On July 7, Biden laid out his plan to strengthen American resilience by bringing back critical supply chains to America.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought home the imperative that we must never again face shortages of critical products such as medical equipment when confronting a national crisis. An American who is sick in a pandemic shouldn’t be dependent on drugs from China or ventilators that Trump bought from Russia. If there is a global supply shortage, the U.S. could end up at the back of the line — and our competitors could cut us off to gain a strategic advantage.
As we build the American economy back better, Biden will put Americans to work making critical products, from medical equipment and supplies to semiconductors and communications technology, here in the United States.
Under Trump, our supply chains have actually gotten less secure. His 2017 tax legislation cut taxes for companies that move manufacturing and profits overseas, and we’ve seen pharmaceutical imports rise since the tax cuts were enacted. Trump ignored warnings from experts about U.S. medical supply chain vulnerabilities.
Biden will make sure we close critical U.S. supply chain gaps by immediately directing a comprehensive and ongoing process to evaluate and protect key U.S. supply chains, starting with a 100-day supply chain review at the beginning of a Biden Administration to determine vulnerabilities and needs in vital sectors. In addition, he will:
Leverage federal buying power and the full range of government authorities, including the Defense Production Act, BARDA, and federal procurement, to make sure that we make critical products in America.
Change the tax code to eliminate the incentives for pharmaceutical and other companies to move production overseas and establish new incentives for companies to make critical products in the U.S.
Rebuild critical stockpiles, ensure adequate surge manufacturing capacity in times of crisis, and regularly review supply chain vulnerabilities.
Work with allies to reduce their dependence on competitors like China while modernizing international trade rules to secure U.S. and allied supply chains,
Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, offered his own plan to “Build back better” and revitalize jobs and the economy to benefit working families after the devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic.(c) Karen Rubin/news-photos-features.com
Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, offered his own plan to “Build back better” and revitalize jobs and the economy to benefit working families after the devastation wrought by the coronavirus pandemic. This is from the Biden campaign:
Joe Biden believes to his core that there’s no greater economic engine in the world than the hard work and ingenuity of the American people. Nobody has more respect for the working women and men who get up every day to build and sustain this country, or more confidence that they can meet the challenges we face.
Make no mistake: America has been knocked down. The unemployment rate is higher than it was in the Great Recession. Millions have lost jobs, hours, pay, health care, or the small business they started, through no fault of their own.
The pandemic has also laid bare some unacceptable truths. Even before COVID-19, the Trump Administration was pursuing economic policies that rewarded wealth over work and corporations over working families. Too many families were struggling to make ends meet and too many parents were worried about the economic future for their children. And, Black and Latino Americans, Native Americans, immigrants, and women have never been welcomed as full participants in the economy.
Biden believes this is no time to just build back to the way things were before, with the old economy’s structural weaknesses and inequalities still in place. This is the moment to imagine and build a new American economy for our families and the next generation.
An economy where every American enjoys a fair return for their work and an equal chance to get ahead. An economy more vibrant and more powerful precisely because everybody will be cut in on the deal.
In this time of crisis, Joe Biden has a plan to create millions of good-paying jobs and to give America’s working families the tools, choices, and freedom they need to build back better.
That starts with a real strategy to deal with the pandemic. We can’t solve the jobs crisis until we solve the public health crisis. Trump may have forgotten about COVID, but COVID hasn’t forgotten about us. On March 12, April 27, and June 11, Biden laid out a comprehensive strategy to get the pandemic under control and effectively reopen the economy — an approach that will both protect the health and safety of our people and boost economic activity. He will start implementing that plan on Day One.
Biden will also provide further immediate relief to working families, small businesses, and communities. Biden will:
Provide state, local, and tribal governments with the aid they need so educators, firefighters and other essential workers aren’t being laid off.
Extend COVID crisis unemployment insurance to help those who are out of work.
Provide a comeback package for Main Street businesses and entrepreneurs.
And, Biden will immediately put people to work by enlisting them to help fight the pandemic, including through a Public Health Jobs Corps.
But that’s just the start. The Biden economic recovery plan for working families will build our economy back better. Whenever America has had its back against the wall, we have acted together to lay the foundation — through public investment and a strong social contract — for the American people to pull together and push forward.
The Biden plan will mobilize the American people in service of four bold, national efforts to address four great national challenges. As President, Biden will:
1. Mobilize American manufacturing and innovation to ensure that the future is made in America, and in all of America. We’ve seen the importance of bringing home critical supply chains so that we aren’t dependent on other countries in future crises. But Biden believes we can’t stop there — he is releasing a plan today to build a strong industrial base and small-business-led supply chains to retain and create millions of good-paying union jobs in manufacturing and technology across the country.
2. Mobilize American ingenuity to build a modern infrastructure and an equitable, clean energy future. We’ve seen the need for a more resilient economy for the long-term, and that means investing in a modern, sustainable infrastructure and sustainable engines of growth — from roads and bridges, to energy grids and schools, to universal broadband. Biden will soon release updated proposals to meet the climate crisis, build a clean energy economy, address environmental injustice, and create millions of good-paying union jobs.
3. Mobilize American talent and heart to build a 21st century caregiving and education workforce which will help ease the burden of care for working parents, especially women. We’ve seen in this pandemic the immense burdens working parents, and especially women, carry in juggling their jobs and their caregiving responsibilities. We’ve learned anew how hard this work is, and how underappreciated those who do it are. Joe Biden will soon announce a plan to make it far easier to afford child care and to ensure aging relatives and people with disabilities have better access to home and community-based care; to elevate the pay, benefits, and professional opportunities for caregivers and educators; to create millions of good-paying new jobs in these areas with a choice to join a union; and to free up millions of people to join the labor force and grow a stronger economy in return.
4. Mobilize across the board to advance racial equity in America. We’ve seen again this year the tragic costs of systemic racism. Biden believes that addressing those costs has to be core to every part of the economic agenda, and also a distinct priority in its own right. As President, he will pursue a dedicated agenda to close the racial wealth gap, to expand affordable housing, to invest in Black, Latino, and Native American entrepreneurs and communities, to advance policing and criminal justice reform, and to make real the promise of educational opportunity regardless of race or zip code.
Building back better means an updated social contract that treats American workers and working families as essential at all times, not just times of crisis –– with higher wages, stronger benefits, and fair and safe workplaces. We’ve seen millions of American workers put their lives and health on the line to keep our country going. As Biden has said, let’s not just praise them, let’s pay them — a decent wage, at least $15 per hour, and ending the tipped minimum wage and sub-minimum wage for people with disabilities, and strong benefits so they can live a middle class life and provide opportunity for their kids. This starts with passing the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, providing public service and federal government workers with bargaining rights, and taking other steps to make it easier for workers to organize unions and collectively bargain. Biden will also address discrimination and harassment in the workplace, and pass the Paycheck Fairness Act as the next step in efforts to ensure women are paid equally for equal work. He will pass universal paid sick days and 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave. And he has a plan to ensure that every American has access to quality, affordable health care, by providing a public option and lowering costs for care and for prescription drugs.
Building back better means helping small businesses and entrepreneurs come out the other side of this crisis strong, while demanding more from corporate America. We’ve seen the second bailout in 12 years for big corporations and Wall Street. And we’ve seen the Trump Administration provide all the tools necessary to help big businesses and well-connected cronies, while small businesses had to jump through hoops and many couldn’t access the relief they needed. Biden will ensure that corporate America finally pays their fair share in taxes, puts their workers and communities first rather than their shareholders, and respects their workers’ power and voice in the workplace. And Biden will help small businesses manage through the pandemic and recover, so that millions of entrepreneurs can get back on their feet and carry this economy forward.
To see this agenda through, Joe Biden will make new, bold investments and speed up the timetable for many of the 10-year investments he has already announced. He will pay for the ongoing costs of the plan by reversing some of Trump’s tax cuts for corporations and imposing common-sense tax reforms that finally make sure the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share.
Today’s elevated unemployment will mean lower demand, which will mean lower growth for our economy (which relies on consumption). A robust jobs agenda will increase demand. That is why many economists agree that if we fail to make far-reaching, productive investments, it will undermine not only our long-term growth potential, but also our long-term fiscal situation. Additionally, for communities of color that are experiencing disproportionate rates of unemployment, and for young people entering the workforce, getting to full employment as fast as possible is critical to their futures and all of America’s future. Those who argue we can’t afford these investments are the same people who doled out trillions in giveaways to the wealthy and corporations the past three years. Now they’re saying there’s no money left for working families? Joe Biden fundamentally rejects that notion.
Biden is releasing details on the first part of his agenda, with a separate factsheet on his strategy for manufacturing and innovation to ensure the future is made in America, in all of America, by American workers.
