Biden Touts Building Economy For 'forgotten' Americans

DeForest, United States, Feb 9 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 9th Feb, 2023 ) :US President Joe Biden hit the road Wednesday in Wisconsin, touting his plan to rebuild the blue-collar economy a day after a rousing State of the Union speech that reinforced expectations the 80-year-old will declare he's seeking a second term.

Biden hasn't yet announced a reelection bid and given his age, many -- even from his own party -- feel he should step aside in 2024.

Asked about running in an interview with PBS NewsHour on Wednesday, he said he had yet to decide.

"I haven't made that decision," he said. "That's my intention, I think, but I haven't made that decision firmly yet." But his Tuesday night address to Congress laid out what amounted to a campaign platform, which he returned to during a visit with union labour apprentices in DeForest, a small town in Wisconsin -- the crucial swing state that Biden narrowly won in 2020.

"For decades, the backbone of America, the middle class, has been hollowed out. It's been hollowed out. Good paying manufacturing jobs moved (to) overseas production because it was cheaper," Biden told the workers, who wore hard hats and high-visibility safety vests.

"Now we're going to turn that around, we're building an economy where no one's going to be left behind. My economic plan is about investing in places, people that have been forgotten," he said at the union training centre.

It's a message he'll repeat on Thursday on a trip to the increasingly Republican stronghold of Florida.

And it's a message he hammered, over and over, during his State of the Union before a packed chamber on Capitol Hill and a television audience of millions.

Casting himself as a centrist in an era where partisan politics has become something of a blood sport, his sunny optimism, complete with jokes and frequent pauses to smile, contrasted strongly with aggressive jeering from the ranks of Republican lawmakers.

On multiple occasions, Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the Republican heading the party's narrow new majority in the House of Representatives, stood to applaud Biden -- and appeared to try to quiet his more radical members.

But the raucous far-right wing that effectively has a stranglehold on the party's congressional leadership broke with convention to hurl boos and insults.