ICYMI: Lawrence O'Donnell: President Biden's Economic Legacy "Will Be Paying Huge Economic Dividends for Decades to Come"

Following President Biden's remarks on his middle-out, bottom-up economic playbook yesterday, MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell discussed President Biden's success in passing the agenda he proposed at Brookings before he ran for president in 2018—even while rescuing the country from the pandemic. O'Donnell spoke about how President Biden's accomplishments "will be paying huge economic dividends for decades to come"—from rebuilding infrastructure to bringing manufacturing back to America and creating good-paying jobs—and how "Donald Trump and Republicans will try to take credit for that manufacturing boom over the next four years, the Biden boom."

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MSNBC's The Last Word: Lawrence: Biden's legacy will be 'paying dividends' for decades to come
[Lawrence O'Donnell, 12/10/2024]

LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: It wasn't Joe Biden's first time speaking to the scholars at Brookings. NBC's Mike Memoli reminded me today that six years ago, Joe Biden spoke at Brookings as a former senator and former vice president, who was a year away from announcing his candidacy for president. Joe Biden described the policy failures of the Trump Administration then, and what he thought we should do about it.

THEN-FORMER VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: We have to deal with the tax code. It's wildly skewed toward taking care of those at the very top. It favors, overwhelmingly favors, investors over workers and it's riddled with unproductive expenditures. […] Look what's happened with the latest tax cut. Once again, those at the very top get the biggest breaks, and what do we have to show for it?

Second, we've got to educate our people. […] We found that, by the end of this decade, 6 in 10 jobs are going to need some training, some education beyond high school, or you're not going to make it. […] College, community college, they should be free, in my view. […] I believe every state university should be free. We can afford it. […]

The third thing we've got to do is we have to empower workers. […] We've got to rebuild this nation's infrastructure. […] Look, we need roads, we need waterways, we need ports to move our products. We need highways and transit to get workers to and from work. We need lightning-fast broadband to communicate. It's not a luxury. It's an absolute necessity to compete with the rest of the world. We need a massive investment in infrastructure: roads, bridges, airports, broadband. We've been lagging behind for too many years now, and we can afford it.

O'DONNELL: And even after entering the presidency on the verge of a possible economic depression worldwide because of the COVID- 19 pandemic and the resulting supply chain disruptions around the world that increased inflation worldwide, President Biden never lost sight of the policy goals that he announced that day at Brookings in 2018.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: We delivered immediate economic relief to those most in need. We got back to full employment, got inflation back down, managed the soft landing that most people thought was not very much likely to happen. Today, here at Brookings Institution, I would like to talk about pivotal actions we've taken to rebuild the economy for the long haul.

O'DONNELL: Today, the President laid out a legacy that the Washington press corps might be inclined to forget in the coming years when Donald Trump will eagerly, and falsely, be taking credit for computer chip factories opening and jobs being created thanks to the policy achievements of President Biden and the Democrats in Congress that will be paying huge economic dividends for decades to come, and in some of the infrastructure projects for the next hundred years.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Most economists agree the new administration is going to inherit a fairly strong economy, at least at the moment—an economy going through a fundamental transformation that's laid out a stronger foundation and a sustainable, broad-based, highly productive growth. […]

Over 16 million new jobs — that's new jobs — the most in any single presidential term in American history; the lowest average unemployment rate of any administration in the last 50 years; 20 million applications for new business records […] stock market hits record highs. […]

After decades of sending jobs overseas for the cheapest labor possible, companies are coming back to America, investing and building here, and creating jobs here in America, in my view, where they belong. […]

We acted quickly to get inflation down with the help of Republicans and Democrats. Inflation came down to pre-pandemic levels. Wages have increased. But still, too many working- and middle-class families struggle with high prices for housing and groceries and the daily needs of life. At the same time, as inflation and interest rates continue to fall, we've entered a new phase of our economic resurgence.

O'DONNELL: The first tunnel under the Hudson River connecting Manhattan with New Jersey is 97 years old. And everyone driving through that tunnel right now tonight, the Holland Tunnel, at this very moment, just takes that tunnel for granted. It has been a permanent fact of their lives, and they should take it for granted, they have a right to take it for granted. But a new tunnel is going to be built under the Hudson River connecting Manhattan and New Jersey thanks to the Biden Infrastructure Bill. By the time that tunnel is actually finished and operational, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will no longer be in politics. But for the next 100 years at least, we will have Joe Biden to thank for that tunnel. But that tunnel, and the rest of Joe Biden's legacy, probably won't have Joe Biden's name on it.

President Biden reminded us today of the difference between Donald Trump and Joe Biden on infrastructure.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: We had Infrastructure Week for four years. Nothing got built. Well, everybody said when I wanted to have an infrastructure bill that mattered — over a trillion three hundred billion dollars — we'd never get it done. We got it done.

O'DONNELL: I was one of the people who did not expect Joe Biden to "get it done," because he was working with the smallest margin a president's party has ever had in the United States Senate. But it turns out his 36 years of experience in the Senate mattered, mattered a lot, in pulling off those legislative miracles that delivered on the Biden agenda.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: The United States invented these computer chips, but over time, we stopped making them. In the very beginning, we had—we produced 40 percent of them in the world. Well, they all went overseas, almost—virtually all.

So, when the pandemic hit, we found out how vulnerable America was. Supply chains abroad got shut down in the Far East because people got sick. The factories making the chips closed. And all of a sudden, everybody started learning about supply chains, a phrase that was probably used more in the last four years than the last 40 years. No, I'm serious. You couldn't get these chips. Prices soared.

For example, it takes over 3,000 chips to build an American automobile — 3,000. But when the overseas factories making those chips shut down, the production stopped and the cost of new cars soared. […]

O'DONNELL: President Biden described how his CHIPS and Science Act is bringing the manufacture of computer chips back to this country with new factory jobs that have average salaries of $102,000 a year.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: We knew in the beginning this wasn't going to come to fruition in my administration. It takes time to get this done, but watch, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 years from now.

We'll soon be the only economy in the world to have all five of the major chip companies operating in the United States of America. It's not only creating thousands—it will create thousands of jobs, and good-paying jobs building chips factory, it also creating those jobs for workers installing more solar panels, batteries, selling more electric vehicles than ever before.

You know, that's a construction boom and a manufacturing boom all across America.

O'DONNELL: You can be guaranteed that Donald Trump and Republicans will try to take credit for that manufacturing boom over the next four years—the Biden boom. President Biden warned, correctly, that Donald Trump's threatened tariffs will increase inflation, even though Donald Trump tried to deny that in a recent interview.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: Now inflation is coming down faster than almost anywhere in the world, in advanced economies. As inflation eased and the strong labor market persisted, inflation-adjusted wages and incomes began to rise. Average after-tax income is up almost $4,000 than prices for average Americans.

O'DONNELL: President Biden pointed out that the unemployment rate during his Administration is the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years.

PRESIDENT BIDEN: From the crisis we inherited, we not only beat the pandemic; we broke from the economic orthodoxy that has failed this nation, in my view, for a long time—a theory that led to fewer jobs, less economic growth, and bigger deficits.

I had a fundamentally different theory. My theory was the strongest economy is built from the bottom up and the middle out—from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down.

And the best way to build that in America was to invest in America, invest in American products and invest in the American people—not by handing out tax breaks to those at the top.