President Joe Biden said Tuesday that people were only starting to see the effects of his multi-trillion dollar spending agenda, despite Americans continuing to struggle with higher prices from inflation.
“We passed the American Rescue Plan,” Biden boasted. “Now everybody knows it, but we did so much, no one knows the effects of it yet. It’s just coming into play.”
The president spoke to workers at a computer chip manufacturing plant in Bay City, Michigan, about the economy.
He argued that the $1.9 trillion funding in the American Rescue Plan helped enable local governments to keep paying their employees. He also boasted of his additional trillions in spending for government-subsidized health care, manufacturing, infrastructure, and green energy.
“So many things you’re going to find out that we’ve already done that we haven’t been able to actually implement yet,” he said.
The president claimed that the economy and life in America would only get better under his presidency.
“What’s most exciting about it is people are starting to feel a sense of optimism and the impact of these legislative achievements in their own lives. It’s going to accelerate in the months ahead,” he said.
Biden promoted the bill he signed to spend billions on green energy and subsidize semiconductor chip manufacturing as evidence that jobs would surge back to states like Michigan.
“We’re going to be the supply chain. And the difference is that we’re going to make the supply chain available to the rest of the world,” he said. “We’re not going to be hostage anymore.”
The president also claimed that inflation was “starting to slow.”
“That’s good news for the holiday season,” he said, although he admitted that inflation would “take time to get back to normal levels” and that “we could see setbacks along the way.”
Biden also tried to identify with the workers in Michigan, comparing them to the people he grew up with in Delaware.
“You felt left out for a long time. … The economy left you behind, the industries that are rapidly changing, you were left out. I understand it. My family understands it,” he said.
“Hear me,” he added. “We’re going to leave nobody behind this time around.”