WASHINGTON — Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden Tuesday challenged President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to improve America’s infrastructure by proposing an ambitious $2 trillion clean energy investment across sectors in four years as part of what the Biden campaign considers to be “the largest mobilization of public investment since World War II.”
After releasing an initial climate proposal last year, Biden and his campaign now see an opportunity to go further in enacting green energy measures.
He is now putting forth a new set of “dramatic” — as one senior campaign official described them — proposals that the campaign claims would create millions of new union jobs across the auto industry, transit, power sector, buildings, housing and innovation.
The plan notably keeps Biden’s 2050 time line to establish a 100 percent clean energy economy with net-zero emissions, but puts in place a more achievable goal to cut the nation’s carbon footprint in half by 2035. The proposal also comes a week after the Biden and Sanders joint task force on climate, chaired by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and former Secretary of State John Kerry, proposed eliminating carbon pollution specifically from power plants by 2035.
The Biden campaign ribbed the president’s multiple “failed” attempts in the past to propose reforms, with one senior campaign official telling reporters Tuesday that “this is an actual ‘infrastructure week’ and something that, as we know, Trump has tried to make as a core of his economic plan, has consistently failed to put forward meaningful plans and certainly failed to make them happen.”
Biden’s latest clean energy plan is the second installment of his “Build Back Better” economic revitalization proposal that includes aggressive reforms aimed at keeping keep jobs in the U.S. and create an equal playing field for all Americans to contribute to their economy. It’s the latest example of the Biden campaign’s effort to gain ground against the president in one rare area where voters say they favor Trump according to recent polling — the economy.
“We continue to take the economic argument and the jobs argument directly to Trump and to draw a really strong contrast on who can actually get these things done,” the official added.
As with last week’s announcement of a $700 billion plan to ramp up spending on American-made goods and research and development, which the Biden team worked with Sen. Elizabeth Warren advisers to develop, Tuesday’s updated climate policy reflects collaboration with major unions as well as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, another former Democratic presidential hopeful.
Biden’s latest plan represents a slight shift in his clean energy vision towards positions favored by progressive-leaning groups. Senior campaign advisors explained the shift as the culmination of a yearlong term listening session with activist groups, governors, mayors, unions and business leaders.
Biden often found himself facing climate activists at campaign events throughout the Democratic primary season, where he most recently voiced his position to a New Hampshire protester in February that he hears their concerns and that his campaign was “working” on defining more achievable goals.
In a statement to NBC News, Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund CEO and president Gina McCarthy said that Biden’s plan “by a long shot is the most ambitious we have ever seen from any president in our nation’s history,” a result of him listening to numerous concerns from groups across the country that pushed him make clean energy reforms sooner.
The $2 trillion investment over four years also speeds up his initial time frame of devoting $1.7 billion over 10 years to green spending, which senior campaign officials said is still a tenant of his vision given that not all the proposals of his initial plan will be included in the four-year time line.
The campaign has yet to put a full price tag on his economic plans, saying they would do so once they unveil the full “Build Back Better” four part package. However, a second senior campaign adviser said that they would include a majority of these proposals in an economic stimulus Biden hopes Congress will pass once he’s elected president to address the ongoing pandemic. Parts of the plan could be passed through executive order, legislation and paid for by reversing Trump’s tax bill.
