In his first speech to a joint session of Congress on April 28, Joe Biden made the calculation that he needed to directly address the needs of the working class. “20 million Americans lost their jobs in the pandemic – working- and middle-class Americans. At the same time, the roughly 650 billionaires in America saw their net worth increase by more than $1 trillion,” Biden noted, “[T]rickle-down economics has never worked. It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle-out”. Biden went on to highlight several specific reforms he supported that would have far-reaching implications for the lives of countless millions of working people.
Reminiscent of Cold War-era Democratic presidents, he couched this program in explicitly imperialist terms, cynically attempting to win favor for his policy of confrontation with China — a potentially catastrophic course of action that is already doing great harm to workers in the United States, China and the rest of the world. But what is unique about this speech is that the most powerful bourgeois politician used this most prominent of platforms to speak directly to the interests of workers as a class and propose a raft of progressive measures with real substance to address the issues of class and racial inequality. Understanding why this happened is of crucial importance to those who want to win these immediate reforms and socialists who envision an entirely new type of society.
This decision was not made out of the kindness of Joe Biden’s heart. Biden has been a loyal servant of big business his entire career — supporting anti-worker “free” trade agreements, deregulating the big banks and financial institutions, and helping eviscerate the social safety net.
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https://www.liberationnews.org/biden-uses-first-major-address-to-lay-out-program-for-the-working-class/
