A year after signing laws to spur U.S. manufacturing and renewable energy, Biden hopes ‘Investing in America’ resonates with voters

WASHINGTON – Speaking at the White House on Wednesday, President Joe Biden boiled down his administration’s sweeping economic agenda to a simple message.

“Bidenomics,” he said, embracing the term popularized by his conservative critics, “is just another way of saying ‘restoring the American Dream.’ ”

A year after he signed legislation to spur U.S. manufacturing, lower health care costs and speed the nation’s transition to low-carbon energy, Biden and his administration have embarked on a nationwide messaging blitz to make the case to voters for an economic future guided by active government involvement.

It’s a vision the president contrasts with the “trickle-down” economics espoused by his Republican predecessors that he blames for hollowing out the American middle class and sending jobs overseas. But unlike that approach of cutting taxes on corporations and the rich in hopes that some of their prosperity reaches everyone else, Biden’s philosophy involves a complex set of policies that defy easy explanation.

That challenge is evident in surveys, which show that Americans broadly support the components of Biden’s “Investing in America” agenda, such as fixing up aging infrastructure, capping the price of insulin, boosting U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and developing low-carbon energy to combat climate change. Despite that, a CNN poll conducted in July found that nearly two-thirds of voters disapprove of how he has handled the economy.

In an Aug. 11 presentation by administration officials to reporters from regional outlets, including The Spokesman-Review, White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients said, “it takes some time” for Americans to feel the effects of most government investments. He used the example of the thousands of bridges that will be built or repaired with funds from the bipartisan infrastructure law Congress passed in 2021.

“The bridge ain’t built that’s going to make that town more livable, that business more competitive, that commute shorter,” Zients said. “The bridge is started, but it’s not done yet, so there’s some lag time here.”

But with the 2024 elections approaching and Republicans able to use their House majority to block legislation this year, the administration and their allies in Congress have turned their attention to promoting the bills they passed when Democrats controlled both the House and Senate in the first two years of Biden’s presidency.

Invest.gov, a website the White House created to showcase the public and private investments spurred by those bills, features a map of the United States covered in dots, each one representing a public or private investment tied to four major bills Congress passed when Democrats controlled both chambers.

First came the American Rescue Plan Act, a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief and economic stimulus bill Democrats passed over universal GOP opposition in March 2021. Some of that money is helping pharmaceutical maker Jubilant HollisterStier expand its Spokane plant, which the company says will increase its vaccine manufacturing capacity and create 200 jobs by 2025.

The infrastructure law – which authorized about $550 billion in new spending to modernize the nation’s roads, bridges, ports and more – passed with the support of some Republicans, including Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch of Idaho. Washington and Idaho are each receiving billions of federal dollars for dozens of projects across the Northwest through that bill.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat who chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, championed the CHIPS and Science Act, which invests $280 billion in research and development and U.S. semiconductor manufacturing.

In a statement Aug. 9, Cantwell said the bill had “seeded a resurgence of American manufacturing, innovation, and entrepreneurship” since its passage a year earlier, while urging more job training to supply the skilled workers needed to fill new jobs created by that growth.

On Thursday, a consortium of colleges and companies led by Gonzaga University announced its application for the Commerce Department’s “Tech Hub” program, created through the Cantwell-led bill. If the group’s pitch is selected, Spokane would be home to an aerospace materials manufacturing hub located in the former Triumph Composite Systems factory in Airway Heights that closed in 2022.

Subsidies from that bill prompted Micron to invest $15 billion in a new computer chip factory in Boise, which the company says will create some 17,000 new jobs. The CHIPS and Science Act also drew substantial GOP support, although Crapo and Risch opposed it.

Nearly all House Republicans opposed the infrastructure legislation, partly because of controversy over another bill, a sweeping package of Democratic priorities collectively known as “Build Back Better.” That legislation died after centrist Democrats balked at its price tag, but the president and his allies in Congress resurrected parts of it in what they dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act, although the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected it would have a minimal effect on inflation.

Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat who then led the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, helped craft the Inflation Reduction Act, which paired tax hikes on large corporations and the richest Americans with tax incentives for consumers and companies to embrace low-carbon energy and transportation. That legislation also capped the price of insulin for seniors at $35 per month and increased funding for the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on tax evasion by the rich.

Sila Nanotechnologies and Group14 Technologies are investing $300 million and $223 million, respectively, to build factories in Moses Lake to produce materials for electric-vehicle batteries. Spurred by grants of $100 million each, the companies say the expansion will create 800 new jobs.

In an interview Wednesday, as she was visiting Seattle with Vice President Kamala Harris to tout the Inflation Reduction Act’s impact, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Washington is uniquely positioned to benefit from the new investment, in part because of state policies.

“This clean-energy economy creates all kinds of jobs for all kinds of people,” Granholm said,” adding that an estimated 70% of those jobs won’t require a four-year college degree. “There’s so much possibility for jobs for the Northwest.”

The Inflation Reduction Act was expected to reduce the federal deficit by about $300 billion, but its clean-energy subsidies – which have no limit – have proven so popular with corporations that recent estimates say their cost could double or even triple from what the Congressional Budget Office initially projected.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Spokane Republican who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has been a leading critic of the Inflation Reduction Act. In a statement Wednesday, she said the Democrats’ bill is part of “a reckless tax-and-spending spree.”

“One year later, inflation has risen an additional three percent, and people are still paying higher costs to feed their families, keep the lights on, and fill up their gas tanks than when President Biden took office,” McMorris Rodgers said, plugging a Republican bill that aims to lower energy costs by rolling back regulations.

That GOP bill, which passed the House in March but has no chance in the Democratic-majority Senate, illustrates the stark contrast between the parties’ approaches to U.S. energy production. While Republicans want the government to get out of the way, Democrats argue that federal investment should guide the economy in a fairer direction.

“Bidenomics,” White House economist Heather Boushey wrote in an Aug. 11 blog post, is “informed by a body of research that has shown that growing the economy equitably requires rethinking certain core economic assumptions, and instead expanding the productive capacity of the American economy through evidence-backed government investments.”

John Podesta, a senior White House advisor, told reporters Aug. 11 that a key part of the Inflation Reduction Act is that its tax credits will last 10 years, allowing companies to make longer-term investments.

“What we’re seeing is that pent-up demand in the private sector,” Podesta said. “When you can plan for 10 years, you can think big. You can make investments that – if you’re on a start-stop, off-on kind of system – it’s much harder to make.”

That certainty encouraged REC Silicon to reopen its shuttered factory in Moses Lake, White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi added, after entering a 10-year agreement with South Korea-based Hanwha Solutions to supply a factory in Georgia with materials to make solar panels.

Zaidi said Biden’s agenda is “about making the United States a more effective place to invest so that five, 10, 15, 50 years from now we are leading the world in certain important industries.” The administration’s policies he cited as having an immediate impact – the expanded Child Tax Credit, which has expired, or the still-in-the-works effort to combat “junk fees” – aren’t currently in effect.

The American political system, of course, doesn’t operate in 10-year increments and has a poor track record of staying the course as control of Congress and the White House bounces between two parties that largely define themselves in opposition to each other.