By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | President Joe Biden Thursday touted $11 billion of business investment in South Carolina that is bringing thousands of jobs to the state since he became president in 2021.
“All told, since I signed the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act into law, companies have announced $11 billion in manufacturing and clean energy investments just in South Carolina. Eleven billion dollars,” Biden said in a 22-minute speech at a West Columbia manufacturer that is investing $60 million to create 600 permanent jobs in the Palmetto State. “Companies across the … country are expanding factories, building new ones, creating tens of thousands of good-paying jobs, most of which don’t require a four-year degree.”
He emphasized that the manufacturing and infrastructure jobs being created in the state and nation are part of an economic vision built from the bottom up and to reverse 40 years of trickle-down economics.
“It’s starting here in South Carolina — and to talk about the progress we made building an economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not trickling down. When you build from the middle out and bottom up, everybody does well, and the wealthy still do very well. With that trickle-down economy, not a whole lot dropped on my dad’s kitchen table growing up.”
An economic system based on money getting to the middle class from the top hasn’t really worked, he said.
“Trickle-down economics has failed the country for decades. It means slashing public investment on things that helped America lead the world in innovation. You know, we used to invest 2% of our entire gross domestic product in research and development. You know what it is now? 0.7%.”
He boasted that Bidenomics — something that may have originally been used as a pejorative term by conservative newspapers — was working.
“Investment is working and factories are being built and jobs are being created — happening in rural America, the heartland, all across America — in communities that have been left out and hollowed out,” the president said. “This is what it looks like across the country: Over 13 million new jobs since I’ve been elected to office — more jobs than any president has ever created in their first two years. Nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs, including 14,000 in this state alone.”
In addition to the jobs at West Columbia’s planned Flex facility, Biden cited other investments successes in everything from clean energy infrastructure to semiconductors. He noted these South Carolina projects [also see this White House fact sheet]:
- Chester County: $1.5 billion by Albemarle to process lithium for electric vehicle batteries; 300 jobs.
- Charleston area: $3.5 billion by Redwood Minerals to build a battery materials manufacturing plant; 1,500 jobs.
- Richland County: $300 million by Cirba Solutions to recycle batteries; 300 jobs.
- Colleton County: $279 million by Pometa Energy Storage Technologies to make batteries to store energy; 575 jobs.
Biden also praised various infrastructure projects in South Carolina that the government is investing in — rebuilding of six bridges in Union County, fixing “malfunction junction” in Columbia, removing 100,000 lead pipe service lines leading to homes, helping a Richland County school district buy 16 electric buses and spending $1 billion to close the digital Internet divide, which helps 359,000 Palmetto State families save on Internet bills.
He said people could go to Invest.gov to learn how their communities are benefitting from investment.
While Biden thanked U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., for voting for the Bipartisan Infrastructure act and bills to invest in semiconductor chips and science, he castigated the state’s GOP congressional delegation for opposing the Inflation Reduction Act, which promotes clean energy to reduce impacts of climate change.
“Every Republican member of the [U.S.] House in this state voted to repeal the clean energy provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that — that attached — attracted all these jobs,” Biden said. “You know, and then, after that effort failed, the Republican Study Committee, which includes over three quarters of the House Republicans, just released a plan to go at trying to repeal it all again. That hasn’t stopped them, though, from claiming credit now that billions of dollars and thousands of jobs are coming to the United States.”
In an appearance on Fox News Thursday morning, presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., slammed Biden’s visit to the state and doubled-down on trickle-down economics:
“Every single month since he’s been in office, except for one, inflation is outpacing increases in wages. We’ve done better. We can do better,” Scott said, according to a press release. “And when I’m president of the United States, we’re going to continue what we did before: cutting taxes, putting more dollars in the pockets of the average family, and increasing an incentive-based economy like my opportunity zones, where within those zones, wages went up 8% while inflation was only 2%. We can do better by trusting the American people with their own money.”
But Biden said his economic vision was working.
“It’s rooted in what always worked best for this country: investing in America. Because when you invest in our people, when you strengthen the middle class, we see stronger economic growth that benefits everybody.”
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We Can Do Better, South Carolina!