It’s Wednesday…
When Biden Bits was posted for Tuesday, President Biden had tweeted 2 times. He added 7 tweets giving him a Tuesday Tweeting Total of 9 tweets and 0 retweets…
As mentioned in Biden Bits for Tuesday, President Biden held an event with Australian EV charging company Tritium to announce that the global company would be building a facility in Tennessee.
The YouTube is 18 minutes and 5 seconds long. President Biden’s full remarks can be found here.
The tweets regarding the invest are a mash-up of his quotes from yesterday’s announcement. Some are direct quotes, others not so much but similar enough to count…
President Biden: China has been the — leading that race up to now. But this is about to change, because America is building convenient, reliable, equitable, national public charging networks. So wherever you live, charging an electric vehicle will be quick and easy. And the foundation will help build — help American automakers set the pace for electric vehicles, which means even more good-paying jobs producing batteries, materials, and parts. That’s also going to help save hundreds of billions of gallons of gasoline over time, serving — saving an average driver who chooses an electric vehicle up to $1,000 every year on fuel; making our country more economically competitive, lowering air pollution, and keeping families healthier as we tackle climate — the climate crisis.
President Biden: Today’s announcement is part of the drumbeat of jobs resurgence like anything — more than anything we’ve seen before.
President Biden: So, let’s keep coming together to invest in the backbone of America, in American manufacturing, and the workers who make it run, because when we do, there’s no limit to what we can achieve. None.
President Biden: When we wrote the — and passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we included $7.5 billion for electric vehicle chargers, like the one Jane brought along today. It’s a little thing. You can see.
President Biden: The new manufacturing facility Tritium is — that it’s announced today is more than just great news for Tennessee. Yes, it’s going to create more than 500 good-paying jobs in Tennessee, but it’s going to deliver greater dignity and a little more breathing room to workers and their families. And it’s going to have a ripple effect beyond — and far beyond one state.
President Biden: Tritium’s new facility is going to produce up to 30,000 of these chargers every year.
On February 7th, 2022 the White House posted a statement regrading; White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment Report:
Today, the Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment – led by Vice President Harris as Chair and Labor Secretary Walsh as Vice-Chair –released publicly the report it delivered to President Joe Biden that includes nearly 70 recommendations to promote worker organizing and collective bargaining for federal employees, and for workers employed by public and private-sector employers.
Additionally, the recommendations include ways to increase private sector workers’ access to information about their existing right to join and/or organize a union, and the legally-defined process of how to do so.Read the entire report here.
White House.gov. 02/07/2022.
The PDF is 46 pages long…
The Make It in America Act was first introduced in the Senate in April of 2017 by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). She again introduced the bill to the Senate in February 2021.
The summary from the re-introduced Make It in American Act.
This bill addresses domestic content requirements and narrows instances in which waivers may be granted.
Specifically, the bill directs the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), acting through the Office for Federal Procurement Policy, to promulgate regulations to standardize and simplify how federal agencies comply with, report on, and enforce the Buy American Act, including guidelines to ensure that a project is not disaggregated for purposes of avoiding the applicability of such requirements.
The bill increases American-made content requirements from 50% to 75%.
Before granting a waiver in the public interest with respect to a product sourced from a foreign country, a federal agency shall assess whether a significant portion of the cost advantage of the product is the result of the use of dumped steel, iron, or manufactured goods or the use of injuriously subsidized steel, iron, or manufactured goods.
The OMB shall establish within it a Made in America Office to maximize and enforce compliance with domestic preference statutes, develop and implement procedures to review waiver requests, ensure that contracting personnel at each federal agency annually complete training on obligations under such statutes, and ensure the development of a domestic supply base to meet federal procurement requirements.
The bill directs the Department of Transportation to enter into a technical assistance partnership with the Department of Commerce to ensure the development of a domestic supply base to support intermodal transportation in the United States and to ensure compliance with domestic preference statutes.
Congress.gov. 02/03/2021.
The COMPETES Act PDF can be found here.
It passed the House on February 4th, the vote was 222 yeas and 210 nays, roll call can be found here.
H.R. 4521 the Bioeconomy Research and Development Act of 2021 seems to have merged with the America COMPETES Act of 2022…
President Biden released the following statement on February 4th, 2022:
The House took a critical vote today for stronger supply chains and lower prices, for more manufacturing – and good manufacturing jobs – right here in America, and for outcompeting China and the rest of the world in the 21st century. I applaud Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Hoyer, Whip Clyburn, and Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson for their leadership in getting this done.
Business and labor alike have praised this legislation as vital for continuing the economic momentum we’ve seen over the last year, and national security leaders from both parties have said that the investments in this bill are needed if we want to maintain our competitive edge globally. This bill was built on numerous bipartisan elements and on shared bipartisan agreement on the need to act. If House Republicans are serious about lowering prices, making our economy stronger, and competing with China from a position of strength, then they should come to the table and support this legislation, which does just that.
I look forward to the House and Senate quickly coming together to find a path forward and putting a bill on my desk as soon as possible for my signature. America can’t afford to wait.
White House.gov. 02/04/2022.
NBC News reported on Tuesday that Governor Ron DeSantis (DeMoron) (R-FL) was asked about his support for a bill that would prohibit discussion “of sexual orientation and gender identity in the state’s primary schools.”
NBC says he said while at an event in Miami:
Asked by reporters at a Miami event Monday, he said it was “entirely inappropriate” for teachers to be having conversations with students about gender identity, citing instances of them telling children, “Don’t worry, don’t pick your gender yet,” and also “hiding” classroom lessons from parents.
“Schools need to be teaching kids to read, to write,” DeSantis said. “They need to teach them science, history. We need more civics and understanding of the U.S. Constitution, what makes our country unique, all those basic stuff.”
“The larger issue with all of this is parents must have a seat at the table when it comes to what’s going on in their schools,” he added.
NBC News. 02/08/2022.
The bill is 4 pages long and can be found here.
This is basically what the bill would do:
It basically creates another way for lawsuits.
For Wednesday, February 9th, 2022, President Biden has received his daily brief. This afternoon he will hold a roundtable with CEO’s of electric utilities to discuss the Build Back Better Agenda.
President Biden has tweeted 3 times so far for Wednesday…
The daily press briefing is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. D.C., time.
The President’s CEO meeting is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. D.C., time.
This is an open thread
