WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will travel to Bear, Delaware, on Monday to deliver remarks touting “Bidenomics” as the White House announced $16.4 billion in funding for passenger rail projects.
The funding comes from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the White House said, which the president frequently highlights as a signature part of his economic agenda. The funds specifically target 25 projects on Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, which runs from Boston to Washington, D.C.
“The investments announced today will rebuild tunnels and bridges that are over 100 years old; upgrade tracks, power systems, signals, stations, and other infrastructure; and, advance future projects to significantly improve travel times by increasing operating speeds and reducing delays,” a White House fact sheet said.
Despite the president frequently touting Bidenomics, the branding has sparked both pushback and confusion from Democratic operatives and politicians, as well as voters.
Swing voters have trouble pinning down the meaning of Bidenomics, said Rich Thau, president of the research firm Engagious and moderator of focus groups for the Swing Voter Project.
“Consistently when I ask them about what the term Bidenomics means, for example, they just start chuckling, because they can’t define it,” he said. “They’re not sure what it means. And a number of them are still struggling economically. So there’s a disconnect between the president touting good economic news and the personal struggles that these swing voters experience every day when it comes to their finances.”
The administration says that Bidenomics is centered around growing the economy “from the middle out and the bottom up” — a phrase that makes its way into many of the president’s speeches. He often paints his economic agenda as a contrast to trickle-down economics, or “MAGAnomics” — the term he has used to bash Republican economic policies.
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“While the Biden-Harris Administration is trying to make travel faster, safer and more reliable, House Republicans are trying to make it slower, harder and less safe,” a White House official said in a statement highlighting the rail funding. “House Republicans are turning their backs on their communities—both urban and rural—and undermining American infrastructure with an appropriations bill that guts funding for Amtrak and makes draconian cuts to transportation and infrastructure programs.”
Monday’s speech comes just one day after the release of new polling by The New York Times and Siena College that showed that Biden trailed Donald Trump in five out of six swing states. Trump was favored in Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania, while Biden led in Wisconsin.
Some Democrats — and the Biden campaign — urge caution when looking at polling a year before the election.
“Predictions more than a year out tend to look a little different a year later. Don’t take our word for it: Gallup predicted an eight point loss for President Obama only for him to win handedly a year later,” said Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz in a statement sent in a fundraising email.
Jim Messina, who served as President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, said in an interview before The New York Times and Siena College poll was released that this moment of time reminded him of handling the Obama campaign in 2011, when the campaign struggled with “terrible economic numbers.”
“We were going through the end of the recession, and it takes a while for voters to equate his policies with how they’re doing,” Messina said of the 2012 Obama campaign. “So it’s going to take a while.”
