President Joe Biden visited semiconductor manufacturer Wolfspeed in Durham Tuesday, kicking off his Investing in America Tour.
“There is no better place to kick off your Investing in America tour than right here,” said Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper. “Manufacturing is changing here, building on our tradition of textiles and furniture to expand to a new generation of clean energy, electric vehicles, supersonic jets, and semiconductors.”
Gov. Roy Cooper, addressing the crowd at Wolfspeed, Durham, during the kickoff to President Joe Biden’s Investing in America Tour, March 28, 2023.
Wolfspeed recently announced a $5 billion investment for its facility, which is expected to create 1,800 new jobs and expand its semiconductor production capacity.
Over the next three weeks, Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, First Lady Jill Biden, and other White House officials will visit over 20 states to highlight what the Biden Administration says is the impact of the President’s Investing in America agenda, which includes the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the American Rescue Plan.
The White House said the Biden Administration’s agenda is “unleashing a manufacturing boom, helping rebuild infrastructure and bringing back supply chains, lowering costs for hardworking families, and creating jobs that don’t require a four-year degree across the country.”
During his speech, Biden claimed his Inflation Reduction Act had created a record 12.4 million new jobs across the country, including 800,000 manufacturing jobs.
“That means we recovered every single job lost in the pandemic and created three million more instead of exporting jobs,” he told the crowd.
Biden said since he took office, his administration has attracted $435 billion in private investment in American manufacturing, with over 23,000 infrastructure projects across the country, strengthening the supply chain in the process.
He also claimed that “extreme MAGA Republicans” are threatening to undo all of the progress that he and his administration have made over the past 2.5 years.
“I cut the deficit by $1.7 trillion in two years but guess what they’re talking about?” he said “Not paying our debt which is accumulated over 200 years. They want to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which means they want to cut the investments in clean energy and manufacturing, and they want to send our clean energy future to China to make us dependent on overseas supplies and supply chains, export jobs overseas, and weaken our energy security.” Biden said his message to everyone, including MAGA Republicans in Congress is “not on my watch.”
“Biden can try to rewrite history, said National Republican Congressional Committee Spokeswoman Delanie Bomar in a press release. “At the end of the day, Democrats’ inflationary policies are causing pain at the pump, kneecapping North Carolina’s agricultural industry and making the trip to Food Lion outrageously expensive.”
NCGOP Chairman Michael Whatley agrees, saying Biden is out of touch with his economic policies, which are causing widespread damage to the North Carolina economy and are hurting North Carolina families, farms, and small businesses.
He said on a Tuesday afternoon conference call with reporters that Biden and his administration promised that inflation would be temporary. Still, he noted that it was at or above 5% for two years straight, and wage growth was again wiped out by inflation over this last quarter.
“There is an absolutely clear connection between Biden’s inflation-fueling $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, which forced the feds to raise interest rates, and the current banking crisis,” Whatley said. “Even liberal economists from the Obama administration blamed Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus for fueling the inflation that we’re trying to grapple with right now.”
He mentioned the prices of everyday goods that North Carolinians buy or use that had gone up from a year ago, including the overall cost of groceries, up 10.2%; eggs, up 55.4%; bread, up 15.8%; natural gas, up 14.3%; electricity, up 12.9%; baby food, up 9.8%, and milk, up 8.1%.
Whatley said the President isn’t looking at the damage he caused with inflation or trying to fix it. Instead, he is asking North Carolina families and other Americans to help foot his proposed $6.9 trillion budget.
“This is the most reckless budget that has ever been proposed in the history of the country,” he said. “This is a $6.9 trillion spending spree chock full of wasteful spending and higher taxes. If the President’s budget were to be adopted, the national debt would eclipse $50 trillion by 2033, and the debt-to-GDP ratio would surpass the record set after World War II.”
Whatley said Biden wants to raise $4.7 trillion in new and expanded taxes, which would be the largest tax increase in the history of the country and is also looking at wasteful spending of over $82 trillion over ten years.
He said the budget includes $3 billion to advance gender equity and equality, $150 million to pay illegal immigrants legal fees, $50 million to retrofit low-income housing with energy efficient appliances rather than helping those communities escape poverty, and $57 million which would support the UN Population Fund which funds abortion and forced sterilization in China.
“At the same time, the budget actually cuts funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which is a travesty, given the crisis that we are currently seeing at the border with runaway illegal immigration and record human trafficking and drug trafficking that is coming into the country,” Whatley added.
Also missing from Biden’s budget is a plan to address Social Security’s looming insolvency, something Whatley says that Biden has been hypocritically and falsely hitting Republicans on for the last several months.
“So, the bottom line is while he’s down here trying to tout all he has done for the economy, middle and lower-class North Carolinians and Americans are already struggling to afford gas and groceries, and the President’s budget will only compound these difficulties,” he said.
