Why I enthusiastically support Joe Biden's re-election - part 1
11 September 2023
The United States has many challenges. We need a President with a record of solving difficult problems, who is focused on the challenges still unsolved, who believes in democracy and the Constitution and who is grounded in reality. For these reasons, I enthusiastically support President Joe Biden’s re-election.
In 2 1/2 years as President, he has accomplished a great deal:
I am wildly enthusiastic about President Biden, who is the best president in my lifetime. His legislation to repair America’s infrastructure and bring back chip manufacturing are both huge accomplishments. Mr. Biden has done more to combat climate change, the existential issue of the day, than all the presidents who have gone before him.
Mr. Biden extracted us from the endless morass of Afghanistan. He has marshaled the free peoples of the world to stop the Russian takeover of Ukraine, giving dictators around the world pause.
Mr. Biden is the first president in a generation to really believe in unions and to emphasize the issues of working people, understanding how much jobs matter.
I might wish he were 20 years younger. I wish I were 20 years younger.
Most important, Joe Biden is an honorable man at a time when his biggest rivals do not know the meaning of the word. Being honorable is the essential virtue, without which youth or glibness do not matter.
I support his re-election with all my heart and soul.
Gregg Coodley
Portland, Ore., New York Times Letter to the Editor
Here are just three of his many accomplishments, each of which would be considered a major achievement for any President:
1. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill) provides $1.2 trillion for roads, bridges, electric vehicle chargers, other transportation, power infrastructure, energy policy and broadband. Only 13 House Republicans supported it although it will boost commerce in all states.
Here is a breakdown of new investments from this law by the Washington Post:
2. The Inflation Reduction Act provides for lowering prescription drug prices, including Medicare negotiation of drug prices and an insulin cap of $35 per month; addressing climate change, extending subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, increasing tax revenue through a 15% minimum corporate tax rate, and increasing tax enforcement and IRS modernization so the super wealthy pay their fair share. No House Republicans supported it.
“For far too long, Americans have paid more for prescription drugs than any major economy. And while the pharmaceutical industry makes record profits, millions of Americans are forced to choose between paying for medications they need to live or paying for food, rent, and other basic necessities. Those days are ending,” President Joe Biden declared today.
The government announced the first ten drugs whose prices it will negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for about 65 million Medicare recipients. Until now, the United States has been virtually alone as the only country in which the government did not negotiate or regulate medicine prices, instead allowing companies to set whatever prices they believe the market will bear. Since their products often are the difference between life and death, it turns out the market will bear quite high prices, but—as Biden observed—those prices often force consumers to sacrifice in other ways to afford them.
A 2021 study by the RAND Corporation found that drug prices average 2.56 times higher in the U.S. than in 32 other countries. For name brand drugs, U.S. prices were 3.44 times those in comparable nations. Heather Cox Richardson, 29 August 2023
3. The CHIPS and Science Act provides $280 billion in new funding to boost domestic research and manufacturing of semiconductors in the United States. Only 24 House Republicans supported it.
These remarkable achievements are based on President Biden’s determination to “build the economy from the middle out and the bottom up.” These investments help all states, blue and red:
Last Friday the global financial services company Morgan Stanley credited Biden’s policies with driving a boom in large-scale infrastructure and manufacturing, a boom large enough that Morgan Stanley revised its gross domestic product growth projections upward to 1.9%, a projection almost four times higher than its original projection.
Analysts doubled their projections for the fourth quarter, and raised forecasts for next year, as well. “The economy in the first half of the year is growing much stronger than we had anticipated,” Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. economist Ellen Zentner wrote.
Part of their reasoning comes from a surge in manufacturing construction across the country thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which invests in roads, bridges, and other “hard” infrastructure projects; the Inflation Reduction Act, which invests in addressing climate change; and the CHIPS and Science Act, which invests in science and semiconductor chip manufacturing. During the 2010s, manufacturing construction generally held at about $50–80 billion a year. Now it is at $189 billion, with private investment following the government investment.
In half of the U.S. states, job creation is strong and unemployment is at or near 50-year lows, while lowering inflation rates has helped U.S. consumer confidence to rise to its highest level in two years (an important marker because consumer spending makes up about 70% of U.S. economic activity). Heather Cox Richardson, 25 July 2023
Any President running for re-election needs to demonstrate that he/she actually got things done. Joe Biden has proven that and deserves not only your vote but your political support to keep him in office.
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