Biden looks to lay out ‘economic legacy’ in address hailing ‘soft landing’

President Joe Biden is set to explain how his administration’s economic policies have put the U.S. economy ahead of the entire developed world in recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic with a major address on his “economic legacy,” the White House has said.

According to a White House official, Biden is scheduled to speak to the Brookings Institution think tank Tuesday morning to lay out how his administration’s plan “rescued” the American economy “from one of the worst economic crises in American history and delivered a soft landing” that avoided the catastrophic recession predicted by many economists.

Nearly four years after Biden took office amid a massive economic slowdown brought on by Covid-19, the U.S. has largely escaped many of the problems that have plagued other developed economies except for one — inflation.

That issue has been cited by many voters who chose to bring Donald Trump back to the White House instead of electing Biden’s Vice President Kamala Harris.

Republicans and other critics of Biden’s administration say his policies, starting with the American Rescue Plan stimulus package enacted shortly after he took office on a party-line vote, supercharged the high prices that resulted from the fastest and largest increase in inflation since the late 1970s.

Inflation has largely cooled in the U.S.. but has persisted in other countries, including the UK.

At the same time, the White House has routinely touted the record job growth under Biden’s leadership that has amounted to 16 million new careers added over his four years in office — more than any other president during a single term. That is combined with what they say is the lowest average unemployment rate in the last half-century.

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An administration official said Biden “will explain how his middle-out-bottom-up playbook is delivering the strongest recovery in the world, and laying the groundwork for a strong foundation for years to come,” including by “investing in our infrastructure, manufacturing, scientific development, and communities that have been left behind after decades of neglect,” giving middle-class Americans “the chance to get ahead by creating good jobs with family-sustaining wages and by supporting unions” and by “lowering costs and giving smaller businesses a fair chance to compete.”

According to the official, Biden will discuss the “inflection point” now faced by the U.S. as he prepares to leave office, a choice of whether to “continue to grow the economy from the middle out and bottom up by investing in all of America and supporting unions and working families” or “backslide to trickle-down economics with another $5 trillion tax cut skewed to the very wealthy, cuts to Social Security and Medicare, and rolling back investments benefitting red and blue states.”

“President Biden inherited a crisis, but we have emerged stronger, while laying the foundation for the future. It will take years to see the full impact across the country, but the seeds have been planted for a new economic foundation that can transform America for generations to come,” said the official, who added that the White House will “amplify” Biden’s remarks with a new website.

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Biden’s remarks come as some Democrats have criticized him for appearing to cede the global stage to President-elect Donald Trump during his final weeks in office.

But in a memorandum to staff obtained by The Independent, White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients exhorted officials to use Biden’s remaining 41 days in office to “sprint to the finish line and get as much done as possible for the American people.”