Biden goals to promote financial agenda in Cincinnati journey

CINCINNATI, Ohio (AP) – President Joe Biden wanted to add support to his business agenda with a visit to Cincinnati Wednesday to visit a union training center outside a CNN city hall.

The trip comes as the fate of his infrastructure proposal remains unclear after the Republicans in the Senate rejected a $ 1 trillion blueprint na key test vote Wednesday. A bipartisan group of 22 senators said in a joint statement after the vote that they were on the verge of reaching an agreement and requested a delay until Monday.

Confident about the outcome, Biden told reporters when asked if he would get a deal on the infrastructure, “Yeah, we will.”

While lawmakers on Capitol Hill debated the details of this proposal, Biden was to use part of City Hall to discuss the broad lines of his economic vision, arguing that his nearly $ 4 trillion package should help rebuild the Maintain the middle class and the economic growth the country experienced in the first six months of his presidency.

First, Biden toured the IBEW / NECA Electrical Training Center in western Cincinnati. He had the opportunity to see trainees up close as they go through their five-year training to see the kind of skilled, well-paying union jobs that he says will be more in demand with his plan.

“There’s a reason union workers are the best trained,” Biden said when meeting with apprentices on five-year training programs.

It is his third trip to the state – one that he lost about 8 points in 2020, but one that is and is vital to the Democratic Party’s political future a key test whether Biden’s economic proposals have the broad appeal the White House is hoping for.

With presidential visits to the Ohio cities of Columbus, Cleveland, and now Cincinnati, the White House is betting that Biden’s policies will be popular with independent voters and that voters will reward a president and party who try to solve their problems.

The state faces a heated Senate election next year, with the resignation of Republican Rob Portman, who helped negotiate the infrastructure plan that now faces an uncertain future in the evenly divided Senate.

The President’s visit brought him near the dangerously outdated Brent Spence Bridge – a bottleneck for trucks and emergency vehicles between Ohio and Kentucky, the replacement of which the last two Presidents promised unsuccessfully. However, Republicans are more focused on the increase in shootings and crime in Cincinnati that they blame Democrats on, despite a myriad of factors including the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden is likely to be asking questions on many of these topics during his town hall Wednesday night on CNN at Mount St. Joseph University, a private Catholic college in Delhi Township, a western suburb of Cincinnati.