PHILADELPHIA — President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris aim to move Democrats forward on a visit Friday to Philadelphia. Getting there may require a walk back down memory lane.
They’ll arrive just days ahead of the State of the Union address, when presidents usually lay out their grandest dreams for the coming year. But given the newly divided powers on Capitol Hill, Democrats acknowledge they probably won’t be able to deliver many (if any) big new policy victories.
Instead, Biden and fellow Democrats have signaled that, as the 2024 presidential election approaches, they’ll be talking increasingly about what they’ve already done. They plan to highlight the bills they passed in his first two years in office, aiming to hammer home tangible and visible results as the spending they approved rolls out to build bridges, repair roads, and cut insulin prices for people on Medicare.
“It’s really important we let people know what we’ve done,” Biden said at a fund-raiser this week in New York. “We can now go out and make our case.”
That case, Democrats hope, will stand in contrast to GOP intransigence from a House caucus that struggled to even elect a leader and has shown an appetite for confrontation, not compromise.
Republicans have blamed Democrats, and their spending, for the inflation that has hammered the country. But in their Philadelphia visit, Biden and Harris plan to stress the upsides of their economic record. They’ll also speak to a Democratic National Committee meeting here, and headline a fund-raiser in a city that has been crucial to Biden’s political fortunes, and could be again if he runs in 2024.
The city will also play a major role in yet another high-profile U.S. Senate race next year when Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., is up for reelection.
The party meeting this week will also set the stage for Biden’s reelection, as Democrats plan to vote to move up South Carolina in their presidential primary process and demote Iowa.
Local members of Congress pointed to an array of projects that have received funding in recent months, and say far more is on the way in the coming years as the bills they passed take full effect. They plan to relentlessly highlight it all to show voters they’ve delivered.
“You can begin to see these things, and they should not be taken lightly,” said U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans, a Philadelphia Democrat who pointed to the $78 million grant recently announced by Casey for safety improvements along Roosevelt Boulevard. “This shows some measurable results, measurable outcomes.”
U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, another Philadelphian who plans to attend Biden’s visit Friday, said Democrats should drive home the effect of the bipartisan infrastructure law, the CHIPS Act to spark semiconductor production, increased health care funding for veterans, and investments in energy transition. Democrats have also talked up the Inflation Reduction Act (which focused mainly on clean energy), and Biden’s initial economic stimulus, the American Rescue Plan.
“We have to show that those are having real results,” said Boyle, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee. He wants Biden to contrast Democrats’ legislative record with recent Republican infighting.
”They are in a conference that is absolutely run by the wingnuts, and they are not at all ready to govern,” Boyle said. “Our message will be, Democrats are delivering and achieving results.”
Biden and his allies can point to continued economic growth under his watch and low unemployment, and, now, signs of cooling inflation. The last two years were the strongest ever for job growth, according to the White House.
“The U.S. has had a better, stronger recovery from the depths of the pandemic and all that disruption than most of the rest of the world,” said U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-Pa. “The fact that we were able to make those investments through the American Rescue Plan and other bills feels like that was absolutely the right thing to do.”
But some economists are still wary of potential trouble ahead, concerned that the Federal Reserve’s delicate task of slowing inflation could eventually tip the economy into a recession, or that recent stock rallies will prove to be false dawns. Recent layoffs in the tech sector have provided another cause for concern, even though other employment data are much more positive, including a 50-year low in unemployment.
Lawrence Tabas, the Pennsylvania Republican chair, blamed Biden for rising energy and gas costs, federal spending, and debt.
”He has done nothing, and everyone is suffering,” regardless of party, Tabas said.
A major threat to the economy looms as Republicans demand spending cuts in exchange for raising the federal debt ceiling, a move required to allow the government to pay its existing bills and avoid a default.
And Republicans argue that Biden’s spending contributed to the inflation that thumped consumers and their budgets.
“The Biden-Harris economic agenda has caused nothing but pain and misery for American families,” RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said. “Their failed policies have robbed workers of their hard-earned money and forced Americans to take a pay cut ... and Democrats don’t seem to care.”
Democrats are looking forward to seeing the money they voted for getting rolled out into local projects, hoping voters will start to see the results as the country approaches the next election.
Scanlon, of Delaware County, said the bills passed in the first two years of the administration have already, for example, boosted the environmental cleanup at the Lower Darby Creek Area Superfund site, which stretches from Delaware County into the Eastwick section of Philadelphia; helped fund development at Philadelphia International Airport’s cargo area and helped pay to upgrade terminals, including adding new restrooms and lactation rooms.
“It’s really exciting to see how much is going to happen for our region by investing in infrastructure, which means investing in jobs,” Scanlon said. “We are trying to highlight when these projects actually get underway.”
In addition to promoting his economic record, Biden will speak to Democratic National Committee members who will vote Saturday on a new 2024 primary calendar, potentially changing the slate of early-voting states.
Biden proposed changes that include bumping up South Carolina to the first-in-the-nation primary slot and eliminating Iowa as an early state. Some Democrats argue that a diverse state like South Carolina deserves greater prominence given their party’s historic reliance on Black voters. (It was also the state that saved Biden’s presidential campaign after he flopped in Iowa and New Hampshire.)
Republicans are not making changes to their 2024 presidential primary calendar.
Democratic consensus around the new calendar has been building, despite some contention among DNC members that a more competitive state for Democrats should go first, given the amount of money and resources poured into early state primaries.
The annual winter meeting runs Thursday through Saturday at the Sheraton in Center City and will include gatherings of regional caucuses and different demographic councils as well as speeches from Gov. Josh Shapiro, Casey, and Sen. John Fetterman.
