President Joe Biden visited battleground Pennsylvania on Friday to highlight a new Department of Labor report showing that the pensions of more than 1.2 million workers have been preserved as a result of his pandemic-era aid package. 

What You Need To Know

  • President Joe Biden was in battleground Pennsylvania on Friday to highlight a new Department of Labor report showing that the pensions of more than 1.2 million workers have been preserved as a result of his pandemic-era aid package
  • Speaking in Philadelphia, the president specifically tout the saved pensions of 29,000 United Food and Commercial workers and retirees, mainly in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey
  • The protection from cuts to retirement benefits was made possible by the Butch Lewis Act in Biden’s American Rescue Plan, passed by Congress in March 2021
  • But Biden’s stop in the biggest swing state in the nation on Friday also comes just four days before the 2024 election in which his vice president, Kamala Harris is facing off against former President Donald Trump
  • Biden is set to return to his birth state of Pennsylvania this week to campaign ahead of the election, a somewhat rare occurrence for the president, who has been largely sidelined on the trail since dropping out of the race himself this summer

The president also announced an additional $684 million to restore the pensions of 29,000 United Food and Commercial workers and retirees, mainly in Pennsylvania, Delaware and New Jersey. 

“For retirees whose benefits were cut or at risk of being cut, we paid them back more than $1.6 billion so far,” Biden declared on Friday. “That’s about 13,600 already paid back in the pockets of each retiree and some are even more.” 

The protection from cuts to retirement benefits was made possible by the Butch Lewis Act in Biden’s American Rescue Plan, passed by Congress in March 2021. The legislation will ultimately preserve the pensions of 2 million people. 

“Food warehouse workers, truck drivers, scores of others don’t worry anymore about their benefits being cut because now they know because of what we’ve done, they’ll receive the full amount of their pensions,” Biden said. 

Biden on Friday also criticized former President Donald Trump and noted that not a “single solitary Republican in the House or the Senate” backed the American Rescue Plan making the saved pensions possible. 

He went on to lament about the partisanship in Washington, asserting that “a lot” of the Republicans who voted against the act thought it was wrong but were “afraid to vote the right way.” 

The president recalled his own father losing a pension, noting it is “critical for peace of mind.”

“It has phenomenal impacts on how marriages work and families hold together when they have that knowledge because there is so much pressure,” Biden said. “But then you retire and find out all those years of work and sacrifice are slashed through no fault of your own.” 

Accompanying his remarks in Philadelphia Friday afternoon, the White House released a video of the president FaceTiming with retired Teamster Marsha Custer from Pennsylvania, whose pension benefits were fully restored under the American Rescue Plan after being cut by hundreds of dollars per month in 2019. 

The video and trip is part of an effort to connect the president to real people who have been impacted by his policies as Biden looks to cement his legacy and round out a more than five-decades long political career before he leaves office in January. 

But Biden’s stop in the biggest swing state in the nation on Friday also comes just four days before the 2024 election in which his vice president, Kamala Harris is facing off against former President Donald Trump. 

The topic of saved pensions benefits could be seen as particularly relevant with blue-collar workers and retirees in the so-called “blue wall” battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that are critical for Harris’ chances. 

According to the White House, Michigan has the highest number of people who have seen their pensions saved under Biden at 80,000. More than 65,000 workers and retirees have received the same in Pennsylvania and more than 33,000 in Wisconsin. 

Harris on Monday hit the campaign trail in Michigan, where she touted the protection of benefits of more than 22,500 workers and retirees under the Detroit Carpenters Pension Fund and slammed Trump’s record on domestic manufacturing and support for labor. 

Biden is set to return to his birth state of Pennsylvania this week to campaign ahead of the election, a somewhat rare occurrence for the president, who has been largely sidelined on the trail since dropping out of the race himself this summer. 

Just this week, a comment by Biden stirred up controversy during a campaign-focused Zoom call on Tuesday night when he responded to a comedian at Trump’s rally on Sunday who called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage." 

The GOP is insisting Biden called Trump supporters garbage while the White House is saying that the president was referring to the comments from the comedian at Trump’s rally and similar rhetoric as garbage only. Either way, it complicated the vice president’s message of unity and her pledge to be a president for all Americans, which has become a central theme of her campaign in the final stretch. 

Leaving Washington for North Carolina on Wednesday, Harris responded to the fresh back-and-forth between the White House and Republicans, emphasizing that Biden clarified what he meant and stressing she disagrees with criticizing people based on who they vote for.  

"I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for," the vice president said. "You heard my speech last night: I believe the work that I do is about representing all the people, whether they support me or not. I will be a President for all Americans."