SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) — President Joe Biden has returned to his working-class childhood hometown. Scranton On Tuesday, he called for higher taxes on the wealthy, part of an effort to paint Donald Trump as an out-of-touch elitist and soften his predecessor's populist appeal to re-election.
Mr. Biden's suspension began a third straight day of campaigning in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, while Mr. Biden has spent much of the week in a New York City courtroom. his first criminal trial.
Speaking from Scranton, a city of about 75,000 people, Biden argued that it is good to get rich in the United States, but that people need to pay higher taxes. He dismissed Trump, the Republican nominee and billionaire, as an instrument of wealthy interests.
It's all aimed at reshaping the conversation around the economy, which has left many Americans feeling bitter about their financial situation during this time. Stubborn inflation and rising interest rates Despite the low unemployment rate.
“When I look at the economy, I don't look at it through the eyes of Mar-a-Lago. I look at it through the eyes of Scranton,” the president said, noting that his humble upbringing and former president's He compared it with the mansion in Florida where he currently lives.
Mr. Biden has proposed a 25% minimum tax rate for billionaires, which he said would add hundreds of billions of dollars to federal coffers. He added that such a levy is “a way to invest in this country.”
“Scranton values or Mar-a-Lago values,” Biden said. “These are competing visions for our economy that call into question the fundamental equity at the heart of this campaign,” he said at the community center, “Tax Fairness for All Americans.” He gave a speech from a stage next to a banner that read:
The president said decades of Republican policy to cut taxes on the wealthy to stimulate the economy “has failed America, and Donald Trump is the embodiment of that failure.” He recounted his working-class upbringing and mocked that what he learned from President Trump's career was that “the best way to get rich is to inherit money.” Along the way, Biden joked about the precipitous decline in market value of the former president's social media platforms.
Biden will attend a training session for grassroots organizers at a union hall before making a stop at his old home, which has long been a touchstone for Biden, according to a person familiar with the plan who spoke on condition of anonymity. Was. arrival.
“Joe Biden has never forgotten where he came from,” Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti said before Biden's speech. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro echoed this sentiment, saying, “He is a man who has never forgotten the people he grew up with.”
“They're the people in his head, they're the people in his heart,” Shapiro said, adding that the Biden administration's policies are “putting money back in his pocket every day.”
The president spent Tuesday night in Scranton and headed to Pittsburgh on Wednesday. He will then return to the White House and return to Pennsylvania on Thursday, this time for a visit to Philadelphia.
By the end of this week, Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris will have visited the state eight times this year, reflecting the state's importance to Biden's second-term hopes. .
“It's difficult to envision a path for Biden to win the White House without involving Pennsylvania,” said Daniel Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. No Democrat has become president without winning a state since Harry Truman in 1948.
Biden lived in a three-story colonial home in Scranton's Greenridge neighborhood until his father struggled to find work and the future president moved his family to Delaware when he was 10 years old. I grew up.
Delaware ultimately became the launching pad for Biden's political career, but he often returned to Scranton, including visiting his childhood home on Election Day 2020. Biden based his autobiography in the city and returned so often that he was sometimes referred to as “Pennsylvania's third senator.” ”
In 2020, Biden described his presidential campaign this way: “Scranton vs. Park Avenue.” His reelection team is building its campaign this year in a similar way. video It advocates for the promotion of the middle class and features interviews with his cousins, elementary school classmates, and county commissioners.
Christopher Bolick, director of Muhlenberg College's Institute of Public Opinion, described Scranton as a “mythical place in political culture” that will serve as a touchstone for Biden's political appeal.
“This is an area that, in theory, fits perfectly with the populist advances of the Trump-era Republican Party,” Bolick said.
But Biden won the city and surrounding counties in 2020. Biden could win Pennsylvania again this year if he can win Scranton and similar places and reduce Trump's margin of victory in rural areas.
“Everything is last minute. Everything we're talking about is small changes,” Bolick said.
Biden's tax claims This is a key part of his efforts to blunt President Trump's “us vs. them” rhetoric.
As president, Trump signed a series of tax cuts in 2017. unfairly benefit the rich. Many of the tax cuts expire at the end of 2025, but Mr. Biden wants to keep the majority of them in order to fulfill his promise that people making less than $400,000 a year will pay no more taxes.
But he also wants to raise $4.9 trillion in revenue over 10 years by increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations. His platform includes a “billionaire tax” that would set a minimum tax rate of 25% on the incomes of America's wealthiest citizens.
Mr. Biden's upset in Pennsylvania coincides with the start of Mr. Trump's first criminal trial, presenting opportunities and challenges for the president's campaign.
President Trump is defending himself from criminal charges Plan to cover up suspicion of extramarital affair Along with porn actors and Playboy models. Mr. Biden's team has quietly embraced the contrast between the former president, who was sequestered in the courts, and the current president, who is free to focus on the economic issues that matter most to voters.
But this conflict becomes less useful when President Trump captures the nation's attention with the first-ever criminal trial against a former president. Mr. Biden did not address Mr. Trump's legal problems, but told his audience on Tuesday that “money does not determine a person's worth.”
“Overall, the cost of living is higher today than it was when Joe Biden took office,” said Sam DeMarco, Republican chairman of Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located.
“This is what the family feels,” he said. “And just because the president follows a script doesn't change things.”
But Biden suggested Scranton was more personal than political.
The president smiled and joked as the crowd chanted “four more years” before his speech began. But I'm already at home. ”
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Associated Press writers Josh Bork and Will Weissert contributed to this report from Washington.
