DM Monitoring
WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden had flown to Warm Springs, Georgia last October as the presidential candidate ahead of the national election, with an intention to compare his ambitions as the president of US with those of the country’s longest-serving president.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt “would come back to Warm Springs often to think about how to heal the nation and the world,” Biden said, adding that FDR was “the kind of president our nation needs right now.”
President Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, the multi-trillion-dollar jobs, infrastructure, and climate plan that’s on thin ice in Congress now, has drawn comparisons to FDR’s New Deal, which created the modern US safety net and employed millions during the Great Depression.
Unlike FDR, Biden’s Democrats have only razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate. And he has to overcome opposition even within his own party to have any chance of delivering on his promises He has promised to shrink US inequality, fix its crumbling infrastructure, and make rich Americans and companies contribute more to spending.
This week, Biden will hit the road, again, to push the spending plans, travelling to Michigan, a state he flipped from Republican to Democratic in 2020. Other White House officials are expected to fan out across the country.
Biden will be also inviting lawmakers to the White House, aides say, but won’t immediately visit two key states where Democratic senators are blocking his agenda, West Virginia and Arizona. Any visit there would be seen as adversarial, Biden allies say.
The programs Biden campaigned on would hand the government a bigger role in the economy than it has had in generations.
