Colleagues have heard me say in a different uh venue, uh, my mother say you're doing god's work and you really are you know uh. I know that uh, a lot of people are in desperate need of a facility like this and child care. I uh. I didn't fully appreciate it uh as a young member of the county council when i was 27 years old, but when i got elected to the united states senate and i was 29 - i wasn't allowed to be sworn in yet, and i mean between the time i Got elected and the time i actually ultimately went to the congress.

I turned the eligible age of 30., but also in the meantime, i uh there was an automobile accident that my wife was christmas shopping and my daughter was killed. My wife was killed and my two young boys bo and hunter were very badly injured and hospitalized for a long time, and so i didn't, i thought well i'll, get some help and i was making a decent salary as a us senator 42 000 a year. That was a decent salary and i could not afford the child care. Everybody wonders why i commuted every day 265 miles a day to be back and forth in my children i could afford the train was cheaper to be able to take every day.

So i could kiss my boys - we wouldn't ozzie and harriet, but we'd have breakfast in the morning and when they got a little older, get them off to school and i'd get in the train and come home in time to uh. If i got home in time to have dinner they'd, they would sell them. I'd get home in time to have my dinner and they'd save their dessert, and i got to see him kiss him good night and get in bed with him. And so i made me realize how difficult it is for uh for the vast majority of people who who need help.

I am lucky. I had a mother who's nearby. A sister is my best friend who quit her job temporarily and moved in with her husband to help me raise my kids, but most people don't have that option. So i've i've been a conscious of concern and the lack of access and the lack of financial ability to have child care for a long time and uh.

I i want to thank the team here at the uh capital development center for welcoming us today. I want to thank the excellent connecticut leaders. You have here ned you're, one of the best governors in the united states, america. They really are.

You really are because you stand up for what you believe in and you don't back down and uh. Mr mayor uh, a as a afghan war veteran, we were talking about all the work he's done with the former governor of delaware, jack markell, now, who's placing afghan refugees coming out of afghanistan and we're continuing to get people out. Thank you for what you do. I really mean it and richard blumenthal who uh was uh, was back in those days.

The attorney general, my son beau, was still alive and he was attorney general, not a joke, but he looked to richard for help he gave and thanks for the way you took him under your wing, i really mean it richard you were it made a difference. You know what he thought of you and uh, and chris murphy, who has been not only a real soldier but uh. He has uh stood up and stuck up for me. Uh and chris.

You know it it. It matters it matters when things are tight and you stand up and make the case, and i do appreciate it and john and i john larson - i go back a long way and uh joe. You can't deny me there's no way out and rosa delaura who is uh. I don't have time.

I'm gon na keep you but the first time i came up this way. Uh i was uh. My son was going to yale law, school and uh. Her mother was a committee with a committeeman alderwoman and i was up in a ladder helping him paint the place he had just rented and i this knock on the door, and this lovely woman came and said: where's biden, where's joe biden and i was up on A ladder and pain all over me - and i was you said the u.s senator.

I said i'm here. I said no where's biden, where's pike and uh. She brought the chief of police over to let him know that everything's gon na be taken care of i'm gon na, but uh your mother was something else, but you that old expression, the apple, doesn't fall far from the tree. Uh rosie you've been an incredible leader in all things having to do with the health and well-being of children, and we would not have had the legislation we're now trying to continue we're not for you and jim you're uh you're you're the real deal um as well As uh you know, johanna uh, my uh, the the comment i got from johanna i get from everybody, where's jill, where's jill, i'm jill biden's husband.

She is now in, i think, she's, either in new jersey or virginia, i'm not sure after teaching 15 credits this week at the community college - and she is out there making the case i'm here today to talk about what's fundamentally at stake right now. In my view, for the families not only of connecticut, because you're ahead of the curve and some of what you've done on your own, but for our country for a long time, america set the pace across the globe for most of the 21st century. We literally led the world by significant margin in investments we invested in our own people and our people, not only our roads, our highways, our bridges, but on our people and on our families. And we didn't just build the interstate highway system and invest to win the space race.

We also were among the first to provide access to free education, beginning back at the turn of the 20th century. It was a distinction and a direct, a decision to invest in our children and our families, and it's a major reason why we were able to lead the world in the 21st century. One of the few nations in the world universal education for everyone, beginning and within first grade, but somehow along the way we sort of stopped investing in our people. Our infrastructure has fallen from the best in the world.

According to the world economic forum, our infrastructure ranks 13th in the world. Roads, bridges have a whole range of things, but just as important as the organization of economic opportunity. Cooperation now ranks america 35 out of 37 major countries when it comes to investing in early childhood, education and care say another way, the world's catching up and beginning to pass. This jill has my community colleagues.

Dr biden has a has an expression she's used for real any country that educates us will out-compete us any country that out-educates us will compete us. We cannot be competitive in the 21st century in this global economy. If we fail to invest, that's why i propose two critical pieces of legislation being debated in washington right now: they're both bills they're, not about left versus right they're, not about um. You know moderate versus progressive or anything else that pits one american against another.

These bills. In my view, are living about competitiveness versus complacency, about opportunity versus decay, about leading the world or continue to let the world move by us folks, a lot of folks know what's at stake in the infrastructure bill, it's about rebuilding the arteries of our economy, putting people To work in good, paying jobs, the estimates from wall street would create up to 16 million new jobs over time, good, paying jobs, union jobs, not not five bucks, an hour, seven fifteen, but forty fifty dollars an hour. You know prevailing wage. You can raise a family on.

You can live with some dignity and pride, bringing our roads and bridges up to speed, replacing lead water pipes, there's over 4 40 000 schools across america. Where you, you got to be worried when you go to the water fountain, whether it's lead in the water and the children are being poisoned, you can turn on the faucets so that every every every place in america but you're sure the water is clean and able To be drunk lane transmission lines for a modern and resilient energy grid, making high-speed internet affordable and available everywhere in america from urban, suburban rural there's parts of the country that are just being left behind and there are parts of the country in states that are economically Prosperous that are being left behind meeting the moment on the climate crisis in the process, creating millions of good paying jobs. You know i've had a couple conferences already held, i'm going to cop 26 in scotland shortly and uh. What i had.

I guess i had 71 heads of state on the first one i did in the white house, and i said, and people are starting to talk about it now, not about me about the idea when i think climate, i think jobs good, paying jobs, union jobs. This is an opportunity we're the only country in the world that has consistently turned difficulty into opportunity. We have a chance to not only make this world more livable, but to actually create greater opportunity for people making landmark investments in public transit and rail and increasing efficiency. Reducing emissions, you know, there's there's millions of kids getting on school, but diesel school buses in inhaling the air getting asthma.

We can, they should be electric buses, electric bus, that's gon na happen. So look. I'm gon na have a tendency to say more than i need to say because you all understand it, but the bottom line is i wanted to come here today because too many folks in washington still don't realize it isn't enough just to invest in our physical infrastructure. We also have to invest in our people and that's what the second bill does the bill back better initiative, seeing children and educators here at this center is a perfect reminder what our families need for and our economy needs so badly to be able to thrive.

You know you all know the statistics, particularly the teachers here, a child come out of a single parent house, where there's real difficulty, we'll hear literally a million fewer words spoken, not different. Words spoken than the child coming out of middle class households, and so no matter what you say, you start them at the same age at age, six or seven, five or six in school they're, already behind the curve already behind the curve. How can we compete in a world of millions of americans? Parents, especially moms, can't be part of the workforce because they can't afford the cost of child care or elder care. In my dad elder care, or the sandwich generation getting crushed here in connecticut, the average annual cost of bringing a toddler to a quality child care center is about 16 000 a year.

That's what it is around the country, some places more, some places a little less. A lot of money at 16, 000 after taxes after you pay your taxes, so the average two-parent family with two young kids spends 26 percent of their income on child care every year. My build back better plan is going to change that it's going to cut the cost of child care for most connecticut families. Three and a half no middle-class family will pay more than seven percent of their income on child care, not sure that's going to help parents get back into the workforce and make ends meet or maybe care for that we have to do the same.

I'm not going to talk about it today, but the other piece of it. You all know it doesn't deals with elder care. You got 80 000 people waiting to qualify under medicaid and there's no spaces. We can afford to do this, but anyway, we also have to provide businesses with tax credits, to build on site for secure facilities.

Look you and the legislature were way ahead of the curve. You decided that for people working in the legislature, there should be a place for their children. Well, you know what we want to do is make sure that we encourage businesses to do the same, to get a significant tax cut, to be able if they have an on-site facility to take care of their workers. Children when they show you so you go to work with your child and you have a serious facility on site.

Well, studies show that when you have on-site care for children center businesses, businesses, the business itself have less employee turnover, less absenteeism and higher product productivity. We show you all those studies, it's real. We can't afford to lag behind other countries when they're invested when america made 12 years of public education universal more than a century ago, it gave the best educated best prepared workforce in the world to the rest of the world, but if we're designing public education today, We all of a sudden we had none, we said, okay, what are we going to? Do? We need free public education. Does anybody think we'd think 12 years is enough in the second quarter of the 21st century? The fact is today only about half of three and four-year-olds in america are enrolled in early education, childhood childhood education like you're doing here in germany, france and the uk.

Even latvia, the number of children in those countries enrolled is 90 90 percent. My plan gets us back on track, provides two years of high quality preschool for every child in america. It also makes investments in higher education by increasing pell grants. I don't know if i can get it done, but i also have proposed this tree community college, like you've done here in the state of connecticut, to help students from lower income families attend community college, four-year schools and invest in historically black colleges.

Universities make sure young people from every neighborhood have a shot of good paying jobs in the future. We also extend this lady's child tax credit which, which is finally a tax cut for middle class. Now, look my friends on the other side, never had any problem. Providing two trillion dollars: tax cuts for the very wealthy look.

I i don't think you shouldn't be able to make a million or a billion dollars, i'm a capitalist, but guess what i'm also listed for 36 years, the poorest man in the congress. But i make big money, i'm a president, but all kidding aside, i don't think we should punish anybody, but just pay your fair share. Just pay your fair share. You know the issue that has been championed by rosa for years in the past.

If you paid your taxes and had an income high enough that you were able to take the two thousand dollar per child deduction, you could actually write it off your taxes. But how many families do you know of cops and firefighters and school teachers? And why that don't have pay that much in tax because they pay a tax, but there's nothing. You say: you're gon na get four thousand back for your kids. Well, you know it's not refundable.

It either comes off your tax bill or you don't get it at all. The american rescue plan, which these folks voted for as well, i'm very proud of us. A real game. Changer started our economy.

Moving again recognize that people lower incomes, don't get the benefit of that tax break because they don't have that much to deduct. So we make it refundable, make it permanently fundamental. So you get that back over you over the years you get. If you didn't have.

If you only had a thousand dollars in taxes, you had three kids you'd end up in a situation where you get five thousand dollars, refundable to you, they would pay you. The government would pay you and we increased - that amount in the near term to three thousand six hundred dollars for every child under the age of six and three thousand dollars for independence between the ages of six and 17.. The money is already a game changer for working families. It's projected to cut child poverty in connecticut.

Well, what one of the wealthier states like delaware, in connecticut by 40 percent? We don't pass the bill and that's real. It's a life changer. The buildback better act says that you get the first half of it paid you and then the second half you get paid on a monthly basis. People are getting hard-working families you're getting a check in the mail on the 15th, today's the 15th, isn't it or or their bank account.

Just like you get social security check, but it's for your children. It's for being able to raise your kids that monthly tax cut for parents is going to end in just a couple months. It's going to impact families of 61 million kids right at the holidays when the winter heating costs are going up. When we need to keep the taxes for families going down, the bottom line is this: when you give working families a break, we don't we're not just raising their quality of life, we're positioning our country to compete in the future.

You know when i talk to all your folks out in the playground, and i joke that's everybody knows i like kids, better than people. Fortunately, they're like me, that's why maybe i like them, but all kids aside, you all talked about well talked about what it means to the families of these children and granted. You had to cut way back and because of a lot of things happening, things aren't the same as they were, but these bills are about strengthening the economy for decades to come. Both of these bills spend out over 10 years, take the infrastructure bill.

All those investments and roads, bridges, highways, high-speed internet water, clean water, everything represent less than one half of one percent of our economy each year. If you add it all up over these years, and the cost of the buildback bet bill in terms of adding to the deficit is zero. So when i hear people say it costs 3.5 trillion and be honest with you, we're probably not going to get 3.5 trillion. This year we're going to get something less than that, but i'm going to negotiate i'm going to get it done with the grace of god and the good little neighbors and the crick night rises.

My grandpa would say, but but all kidding aside we're going to keep coming and because the more we demonstrate it works, the more we can do it's paid for, because big corporations and the very wealthy artists are paying their fair share. Let me be clear: nobody and i, since i got elected when i was campaigning, nobody who makes under 400 000 a year which is a lot of money, will see their taxes up one single penny: nobody, not one, that's why in the highway bill, i didn't add Gas tax, so i keep that commitment. In fact, this plan cuts taxes for working people, there's no reason why, as i said, billionaires and should pay a lower tax rate, literally a lower tax rate than a school teacher and a firefighter a couple. So and that's what's happening now - it isn't right that 55 of our our fortune, 400 companies, the largest companies in america last year, 55 of the five for fortune, 500 paid zero in taxes and they made 40 billion dollars in profit.

I'm glad they made a profit. Keep people employed, i mean necessarily but pay your fair share, just pay a decent portion of what we lay out in these this piece of legislation and by the way i've had a number of fortune. 500 companies come to me and say you're right. We can pay a higher tax that we're paying now because they understand the impact, if we don't invest like we have to on their long-term health and well-being.

This needs to change working folks understand it. That's why, despite the attacks and misinformation, my plan still is the overwhelming supporting american people when they're told what's in it, they understand that when families have a little more breathing room, america has a lot better shot. My dad used to say for real my dad was a well-read well-bred man who was uh regretted his whole life. He never got a chance to go to college and you work like heck.

You always come home for dinner and then go back to work, and i remember we lived in a four four bedroom split level home with four kids and a grandpa and um and uh. You know my bed was against the wall where my parents bed was against the adjacent wall. I remember one night i could tell my dad was just so restless. I was in high school the next morning.

I asked my mom, i said: what's the matter with dad, he said: well: honey, hey uh! This company just told me, they're, gon na do away with health insurance, no health insurance. Well, you know what my dad's, not we weren't poor. We were my dad made. It probably on average, in those days 20, 22, 25 000 a year which is decent sour, but he used to say everybody's entitled just a little bit of breathing room, just a little bit a little bit of breathing room.

You know they know. This is about dignity and respect. It's about building this economy from the bottom up in the middle out. I've never seen a time, and some of you may have beyond my colleagues in the congress may have your master's or doctorate degrees in economics.

Name me a single time in american history, when the middle class was doing well, that the wealthy didn't do very, very well name your time, one single time in american history, so we're not hurting anybody, we're just making sure everybody gets a shot. Let me close with this. This is not hyperbole. The world is watching autocrats believe that the world is moving so rapidly that democracies cannot generate consensus quickly enough to get things done, not a joke.

I've had these i've had hours and hours and hours of meetings and personal conversations with xi jinping. I spent more time with them, i believe, than any other world leader has when i was vice president and now on the phone every time he calls a week talk one of them. So now it's a conversation between an hour and a half and two and a half hours, not a joke, my word, but he doesn't think democracies can compete because they can't act quickly. Enough in my in my summit with putin.

That's what you want! They're betting democracies can't compete. We can't move quickly enough. I'm heading to the g20 came back from the g7. You know how they measure.

They don't measure us based on the size of our military. They don't measure us on how much power we have that way. They measure want to know, can we get anything done, not a joke and you many of you travel internationally? Can we get anything done? Can you put anything together to get something done in america, so folks, they're betting, that we won't respond to this inflection point in history, but i've always said i mean if some of you guys are working me know this i've said it a thousand times: it's never A good bet to get a debt against the american people, never a good bet. So it's time it's time for us to invest in ourselves, show the world that american democracy works.

We've always led the world not by the example of our physical power, but by the power of our example. That's why the world is followed and given us that half a chance, there's not a single, solitary thing that we can't achieve if we do it together. So i'm hopeful there's a lot of questions. The press is going to want to ask me.

I know about how how are the negotiations going and how we're going to get this done and so on? Well, i told you before what my neurosurgeon years ago said when i had that aneurysm. He said your problem, that was in the senate, your problem, centers you're a congenital optimist, but i'm convinced we're going to get this done. I'm convinced we're going to get it done. We're not going to get 3.5 trillion dollars, we'll get less than that, but we're going to get it and we're going to come back and get the rest.

So i want to thank you all, and god bless you and i know you're asking about president clinton. I've been changing, exchanging calls, he seems to be god willing doing well, and so, when i talk to him i'll, let you all know, but in the meantime thank you for taking the time to be here, and i i say this again. The press heard me said for all you elected officials, it's like a bustman's holiday for you. I've come to have to listen to a you know another for another.

Politician speak, but i i am really - and i mean this without exception - i'm so proud to be associated with each one of you, you're honorable, decent, smart women and men and there's a lot we can get done. So. Thank you very much. Thank you question no already, then so we'll do a quick.

Little recap here see uh what was done uh. I quickly want to see this if i uh just test this really quick since i am live and then i'll do a recap just want to play with this. Let's see here, i want to see, if i can do this so see. This is interesting fight.

Oh that's kind of cool. I got ta play with that a little bit. It's kind of neat. You can watch bloomberg all right anyway, uh, let's do a quick, little recap in terms of uh what uh joe biden just said.

So, let's get this together all right! Here's basically what joe biden just said at his uh news conference or press conference. He said we rank 13th in the world with our infrastructure and any any country that out educates us will out compete. Us says: uh his two bills: the bill to back better plan, which is the three and a half trillion dollar social infrastructure plan and the bipartisan infrastructure plan. The heart infrastructure plan, those uh both of these bills, are about competitiveness versus complacency and we need to get them done.

Obviously, hard infrastructure plan includes dealing with things like lead-based pay or lead-based pipes. I'm sorry, roads, bridges, high-speed internet, getting electric school buses instead of diesel school buses, so on and so forth, something that he mentioned. That was a little bit of a surprise. Is he mentioned that he doesn't know if he can get his proposed free community college done? This is expected to get done under the three and a half trillion dollar buildback, better plan agenda, but we're seeing so much pushback in congress.

Right now that it looks like we might not see the free community college get done, joe biden does mention that he wants to try to get as much of this three and a half trillion dollar plan done as possible. He recognizes that he's going to end up with less probably something between 1.5 to 2 and a half trillion dollars and mentions that we'll circle back next year to try to get more he's confident that he's going to be able to get all of it but thinks That coming back next year before the 2022 midterm elections might be the way to do it. Are there a lot of folks skeptical on that, though, there are even now suggestions that potentially democrats are going to go for very short-term extensions of things like the child tax care credit, which is something that joe biden here talked about about how in the next two Months, we're going to see that sort of monthly child tax care credit starting in january, go away. You get the second half for 2021 on your tax return and then there won't be any monthly anymore for 2022, which they're hoping to renew, but they might not.

And so their argument is hey. Maybe if we just do short term extensions. Six months 12 month. Extensions of certain things, maybe they'll become so popular that it'll be easier to extend them in the future.

So this is a way they're trying to get that three and a half trillion dollar package down made it clear again: no gas tax increase, no one making under 400k, we'll see a tax raise with the exception of smokers, though, because their tobacco taxes coming for that Plan mentions that 55 fortune 500 companies paid zero in taxes goes back to talking about them, paying their fair share. One of these examples, of course, is amazon, 24 billion dollar pre-tax profit in 2020, but uh virtually no taxes paid, and some of the reasons for that. Even though their tax returns are private, we're putting together pieces of the puzzle here, some of the reasons for that are things like losses from prior years being carried over tax credits for things like research and development and uh write-offs for stock options, so uh. Now, obviously, the argument for companies being able to write things off or depreciate their investments and taking these tax benefits is that maybe companies, if they have these tax benefits, we'll invest more others say these companies would have invested anyway and so you're, seeing a push for Sort of this minimum tax he's a big fan of pushing pell grants and extending the child tax credit investing in historically black colleges.

But again he made it very clear that, even though he wants to get a lot of these things done like getting medicare expansion to the 80 000 folks waiting to qualify for medicare or making sure that they can get vision, dental and hearing care or helping the Average family with two children that spends 26 on child care every year, uh or getting more of our children involved in preschool education, like the fact that right now, we've only got about half of our three and four year olds enrolled in education, whereas in germany, france, In the uk they're at about 90 enrolled, so he talks about some of these priorities but mentions that he's really going to break up his game plan over the next two years, where what you're going to see is uh, some sort of probably one and a half To two and a half trillion dollar package now and then a second piece later and he's not sure if he's going to be able to get that free college included at all at least based on what he mentioned in this interview here it is uh, or i Should say this was a campaign promise of his to get free community college, and so this is obviously uh. This would be a setback to his promises, if he's not able to get free community college and especially as we're seeing a lot of pushback for us three and a half trillion dollar infrastructure plan. So that gives you an update, uh in terms of what the heck joe biden just said. Thank you very much for watching and folks, we'll see in the next one thanks.

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