Biden to draw contrast with McCarthy Wall Street speech with visit to union facility

President Biden on Wednesday will visit a union training facility in Maryland, where he will seek to contrast his economic vision with that of House Republicans after Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) spoke on Wall Street earlier this week.

Biden will deliver remarks at the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 77 Training Center, where he will criticize House Republicans’ plan for government spending cuts and efforts to take away government assistance from some Americans, according to a White House official.

The president is also expected to emphasize his own budget proposal, which calls for increased taxes on wealthy Americans and large corporations in order to strengthen Medicare and reduce the deficit over the next 10 years, the White House official said.

Biden’s visit to the Maryland union facility will come two days after McCarthy traveled to New York City, where he offered up his plans to deal with the debt ceiling.

The Speaker, in his remarks on Wall Street, said the the House Republican Conference would move forward with its own measure in the coming weeks to stave off a national default, but that proposal quickly fell flat with the administration and congressional Democrats.

McCarthy said the House would vote to lift the debt ceiling into 2024, which would punt the issue into the heart of campaign season. He also said the forthcoming plan would seek to limit federal spending, with proposals to return discretionary funding levels to 2022 levels “and then limit the growth of spending over the next 10 years to 1 percent of annual growth,” without “touching Social Security and Medicare.”

McCarthy reiterated calls for tougher work requirements, as more Republicans set their sights on potential changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), previously known as the food stamps program.

Negotiations between the White House and House Republicans over how to act on the debt limit, which caps how much money the Treasury can owe to cover the country’s bills, are at a standstill.

The White House has been adamant that Congress should pass a clean measure to raise the debt ceiling, as it has for decades under Republican and Democratic presidents, and any negotiations over government spending should be handled separately.

Source: The Hill