‘Red States Really Screwed Up’: Biden Tells MSNBC Why He ‘Invested More’ in GOP-Trump Strongholds
President Joe Biden told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell his administration “invested more” in states that voted for Donald Trump and the GOP because the “red states really screwed up.”
In an exclusive interview that aired on Thursday night’s edition of MSNBC’s The Last Word, President Biden gave what’s being billed as his final sit-down before leaving office on Monday morning.
During that interview, O’Donnell pressed Biden about defying advice from those who warned him not to spend so much on economic recovery measures. Part of that exchange included Biden pointing out his legislation “invested more in red states”:
O’DONNELL: You began your State Department speech this week with material from this which is just being released now, your report on investing in America.
I believe I have the first official public copy of it.
BIDEN: I bet you do. My staff told me they gave that to you.
O’DONNELL: And I’m reading in there about projects in Alabama and projects around the country that will be done after you leave this office, will be worked on after you’ve leave — left this office for which is very unlikely they’re going to name it the Biden Water Project in — in Alabama.
And so there is — there’s so much to talk about in terms of just your domestic achievements alone. These are the — this is the largest list of domestic achievements that I can think of. Certainly in my lifetime of watching this.
But I want to bring this down to something about your presidential decision making in that entire range of domestic policy decisions of which there were so many. And I’m particularly interested in Joe Biden versus Larry Summers. And here’s what I mean by that, you’re in here as — as the president of the United States who we know as Joe from Scranton. And when you are creating your domestic policy response to the COVID pandemic, the stimulus that is going to be necessary for the economy, money that’s going to be necessary to ship — to put into people’s checking accounts, and then all of the domestic infrastructure spending you’re doing.
Harvard Economics Professor Larry Summers, former Treasury secretary, a very well regarded economist around the world is out there arguing these policies are risky, they are — this risks inflation, significant risk of inflation. He warned against inflation very loudly. He also then predicted, when you overruled that particular piece of advice, he then predicted that we would be in a recession eventually, which has not happened. But —
BIDEN: Well, almost everybody predicted —
O’DONNELL: How do you — how do you in the presidential position of having to make these decisions when you’re hearing prestigious economist like him and other voices out there and possibly people within that administration giving you counter advice to the direction you want to go, how do you then decide to make that decision to go ahead?
BIDEN: Two things. One, look, I looked at the practical need for us to instill some confidence in the American people to make them grow this economy. And one of the biggest pieces of that was invest in America. Everybody thought and I — and I thought Barack was a great president. I was his vice president and we went through some — and I remember the argument, well, I thought we didn’t do enough. I thought we didn’t invest enough because we were doing the basic old economics in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
O’DONNELL: But at the time you did do what you called a very big deal, Obamacare, which was the — a gigantic —
(CROSSTALK)
BIDEN: Exactly right. Exactly right. And we did that for two reasons. When I was the president was the leader on that. But I did — we did that for two reasons. One, it was necessary. Look, part of — nothing works unless they — if you conclude the only way of dealing with inflation is to create unemployment and another recession because you got to make sure that we — that we lost jobs, that’s the only way you’re going to keep the inflation down.
But guess what, I was absolutely convinced. Give the American people half a shot. They’ll step up and get the job done if you give them the opportunity. And look what they did. They stepped up in every major endeavor.
And the idea — and I never believed we couldn’t have a soft landing. We had a soft landing. Inflation is down almost to two percent. A lot going on. But the first thing we got to do is go out and take care — I had an advantage and disadvantage. I had a thing called the pandemic that was so badly handled that we’re still dealing with people — thousands of people a day dying in America.
Well first of all, there was rational to spend the money to go take care of that. That was the first big piece of legislation that got passed. But secondly when I came along, I said look, in addition to that we can now change the dynamic and invest more in the things that make us who we are.
For example, I remember walking through the — I used to commute everyday to Delaware, 300 miles a day basically each way — I mean total, round trip. And going through the Baltimore tunnel, I’m probably the only guy that’s not an engineer that walked through that tunnel.
Last piece of work done on that tunnel going under the — under the bay was — I think it was like 1917 or ’18 or ’19. Light bulbs hanging down from inside, the water leaking in. I mean what — what is (ph) we talking about, man. We — so these are things that are never going to create jobs they need to make (ph). So you start building that tunnel and you’re creating thousands of jobs.
People are getting paid a good salary. You’re generating an American product to build it. And look, the other thing, Lawrence, I got a lot of criticism, understandably. We’ve invested more in Red states than Blue states.
O’DONNELL: That — that’s in this book. That’s in this report.
BIDEN: Well, for two reasons. One, Red states really screwed up in terms of the way they handled our economy and the way they handled manufacturing, the way they handled access to supply chains.
You know I remember being out in Iowa and I remember being — one of the big issues was that there was a plant, a smaller plant, 300 people have been around for 70 years. My grandfather worked there. I worked there. My son works there. And then — and they had the best education, this was at the time, really the best state educations in the country.
And all of the sudden a kid comes home after he graduates, he says mom, I’ve got to leave there’s no job for me here, the factory shut down. Well, guess what? Ha, ha, ha you’re running the country that way. How do you do that?
So for example that’s why I worked so damn hard to get the CHIPS and Science Act done. It brought in billions of dollars in investment. Billions. Now the problem is it’s only now starting to see it because it takes time to get it done.
But the point is it brought — and we ended up bringing trillion dollars of the sidelines not just there but an investment. I was absolutely convinced, give the people half a shot at a job where they can make a decent living and you can’t deny them the opportunity to form a union to get a good wage.
For example — I’m getting off. But my point is I was never brought on to know if the only way in 2021 you grow the economy or significantly increase unemployment in order to take control of a — what we’re talking about in terms of inflation, where the hell are we? What happens? But people are now — now there’s — we got a lot of work to do yet but people are now having faith and we can do these things. We can build these communities (ph), we can build these cars (ph), we can do that and people are investing in it and people are taking those jobs and it’s attracting money into the economy and inflation’s going down.
We have a lot of problems. We do have a lot of corporate greed still out there in terms of everything from what we do with the basic needs and learn from people from eggs to butter to bread to gas. But we’re also dealing with that. But it seems to me, I don’t know how we can be the leader in terms of our national security if we’re not also one of the wealthiest countries in the world that funds it all and convinces other people we’re willing to play with them, we’re willing to work with them.
We’re not trying to cut them out. We’re going to cut them in. Anyway, I — I just think that — and I never bought the argument that it was going to cost a significant — significant recession.
Now most of these guys are talking about a soft landing. We got more work to do. But the idea of the way we’re going to deal with inflation is create more unemployment?
O’DONNELL: That has been a policy choice made by previous presidents.
(CROSSTALK)
BIDEN: I know, and I think it’s — I have thought it was wrong for a long time.
Watch above via MSNBC’s The Last Word.
