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Biden: We Have an Opportunity to 'Rewrite Our Economy'

July 8, 2020

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said Wednesday that Democrats have the opportunity to "rewrite our economy" after the coronavirus pandemic.

"We're going to have a breathtaking opportunity to create good-paying union jobs, to deliver the promise of America to Americans who have been denied it for much too long, to rewrite our economy so that prosperity flows not just to CEOs, but to workers who actually build the country," Biden said during an address to the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

Biden added that making it easier for workers to unionize is a "Day One" priority for his prospective administration.

During his campaign Biden has repeatedly expressed a desire to pursue a sweeping agenda reminiscent of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal economic plan. He selected two of Sen. Bernie Sanders's (I., Vt.) top allies to help form a "unity task force" to craft an economic agenda, and NBC News reported Wednesday that the task force presented Biden with proposals that are "far more aggressive" than what Biden was considering at the start of his campaign. This push for progressive policies comes as Democrats have increasingly embraced the message that capitalism itself is detrimental to the country.

One of Biden's selections from the Sanders campaign, who served as an adviser to Sanders's 2016 and 2020 presidential runs, argued that the government can pay for massive spending projects, including the Green New Deal, by printing more money. In May Biden said the country needed "revolutionary institutional changes" to deal with the coronavirus crisis, and he also speculated that the Green New Deal could come in one of the rounds of coronavirus relief.

A CNBC reporter described Biden's tax plan as "the most expensive Democratic tax plan that we've seen from any Democratic candidate in recent history," dwarfing 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton's.