WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Joe Biden on Thursday announced the formation of a new cabinet of top U.S. officials focused on domestic investment and implementation of the infrastructure and clean energy laws Biden signed during his first two years in office.
The shift to an execution phase of Biden’s economic agenda comes as the president also chastised the new House GOP’s economic stance, including their refusal so far to raise the debt ceiling, threatening instability.
Biden spoke about the country’s economic outlook in Virginia Thursday after the news that the U.S. economy grew by 2.9% in the last year, as inflation slowed and jobs continued to abound. Unemployment claims also dropped last week as that metric remains low.
“We’re moving in the right direction,” the president said in Springfield, Va., to a crowd of local officials, labor leaders and members of the Steamfitters Local 602 union.
“We’ve got to protect those gains that our policies have generated … from the MAGA Republicans in the House of Representatives who are threatening to destroy this progress.”
Biden on Thursday announced the new Invest in America cabinet will include the secretaries of Commerce, Labor, Transportation, Treasury, Energy and Health and Human Services, plus the Environmental Protection Agency administrator.
It will also include the two advisers tasked with overseeing major accomplishments of the Biden administration: infrastructure implementation coordinator Mitch Landrieu and clean energy adviser John Podesta, who focuses on the Inflation Reduction Act.
The president has charged the cabinet with making sure his economic plan is generating private sector investment and will drive progress in future years, according to the White House.
“Now we have to make sure we're on it every single day – not a joke – implement it so people can see what we've delivered, give it to them directly,” he said.
Biden promised to veto any extreme GOP economic proposals that make it through the House and the Senate, though Democrats still control the upper chamber.
One of those ideas, called the Fair Tax Act, would get rid of most taxes but raise the national sales tax to 23%, plus phase out the Internal Revenue Service by 2027. But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., seemed to reject the proposal when asked by reporters this week.
Yet the White House and Biden in recent days held up that legislation and Republicans’ refusal to raise the debt limit as evidence Republicans “deliberately choose to inflict this kind of pain on the American people,” the president said.
“Why? This nation has gone through too much,” he added. “Not on my watch.”
Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said his party would continue to advocate for less federal spending and blamed Democrats for persisting inflation.
“When anyone goes to the grocery store this week, you can blame everybody in D.C. that's not willing to live within our means for your interest rates going up and the cost of your eggs and meat going up,” he said.
Even as Biden touted job growth since he took office, with 11 million added as the country recovered from the pandemic, his administration also faced the reality of major layoffs in recent weeks at the nation's largest tech companies. Microsoft announced 10,000 jobs cut this week, and Google cut 12,000 days earlier.
Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young told Spectrum News that “there are special circumstances around the tech industry.”
“But if you look at the labor market as a whole, we continue to see strong job numbers. We continue to see wages going up,” she said. “What this president said he’d focus on – in bringing back our manufacturing base, making stuff in America – that is happening.”