WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden travels to South Carolina on Thursday to say the economic measures he imposed on Congress despite strong Republican opposition are helping maintain the dark red state, and others who voted for Donald Trump in 2020, humming.
Before Biden won a state he lost by just 12 percentage problems in 2020, White House officials argued that if Republicans had succeeded, South Carolina, like many other Republican-controlled states, would have lost billions of dollars in investment and thousands of jobs. .
Biden will use his to showcase a new blank power production partnership between solar company Enphase Energy and manufacturer Flex Ltd. , which is expected to generate six hundred jobs in the state and another 1200 across the country.
Enphase, which is making a $60 million investment to open six new production lines, adding two in South Carolina, benefits from tax incentives included in Biden’s $370 billion inflation reduction law passed last August.
On Wednesday, the White House criticized Republicans for voting for the law and upcoming efforts to bring back tax incentives included in the bill.
“Republicans in Congress, along with all Republican representatives in South Carolina, must threaten investment, jobs and economic opportunity by repealing, repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, which is helping the American people,” White House media said. said Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. ” But as the president said at his first inauguration, he is the president of all Americans. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a red or blue state. “
Republican Rep. Joe Wilson, who represents a region that will take advantage of Enphase’s new investment, took to Twitter after the law passed in a party vote to say it was passed “to the detriment of American families,” calling it “te. “Wilson also voted in April to cancel blank energy tax credits in the law incentivizing Enphase investment.
The White House also took note of South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, who congratulated the Charleston Area Regional Transportation Authority for winning nearly $26 million to build and repair blank power transmission projects under the $1 trillion infrastructure legislation. She voted against the bill.
Sen. Tim Scott, a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, also voted against the infrastructure bill, which included “reckless spending on unrelated projects. “
The one in South Carolina, a state that hasn’t endorsed a Democrat in a general presidential election since Jimmy Carter’s victory in 1976, comes less than a week after Trump, the leading candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination, defeated the small town of Pickens. for a demonstration that drew tens of thousands of people.
“By showing up in a red state and explaining how even those who might not vote for him have benefited from his policies, Biden is beginning to explain genuine choice to this small universe of undecided voters,” said Josh Freed, who runs the weather and power calendar for the center-left organization Third Way.
The White House is making a big effort to show progress under “Bidenomics” as skyrocketing inflation declines, unemployment remains near historic lows and Biden’s re-election war intensifies.
Biden has noted that his public approval ratings, and public sentiment about his handling of the economy, have been dragged down by cursed inflation that hit a 40-year high last summer.
“What is ‘bidenomial’? These are Washington’s inflationary spending, costly regulations and regressive taxes touted through Joe Biden and Kamala Harris,” Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, wrote Wednesday. more expensive, it depletes the circle of savings of relatives and increases interest rates. “
However, White House officials are accepting ownership of the economy, arguing that legislative action in the first two years of the Democratic administration has kept the economy strong in the face of headwinds caused by the war in Ukraine and the coronavirus pandemic. Biden also argues that his legislative victories have set the bar for further expansion if the electorate gives him 4 years.
The private sector has invested more than $500 billion in production across the country since Biden took office. South Carolina, which has an unemployment rate of 3. 1 percent, has noticed $11 billion in new investments in production and energy blank since Biden’s administration began, according to a White House account.
South Carolina has only one Democrat, Rep. Jim Clyburn, on its congressional delegation and no elected Democrats statewide for more than a decade.
But the state has long been a place of political and private importance to Biden: Kiawah Island near Charleston has been the place of family vacations as well as decision-making in the run-up to his presidential campaigns. .
South Carolina Democrats also handed a decisive victory to Biden’s complicated 2020 effort. The endorsement of Clyburn, then the highest-ranked black member of the House, helped Biden earn a decisive number one victory that revived a declining crusade and created the momentum that propelled him through a Super Tuesday winning streak.
The party’s national profile is higher, peaking recently when the Democratic National Committee made South Carolina the first voting state on its 2024 presidential calendar.
South Carolina Democratic Party Chairwoman Christale Spain said Biden, in delivering his speech in the state, fulfilled his promise to be a president for all Americans, not just those who supported his campaign.
“The president has made South Carolina a priority and we are here to help him and we are excited to mobilize the electorate for his re-election,” Spain said on a conference call with reporters.
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Kinnard reported from Columbia, S. C.