President Biden was set to travel to Wisconsin on Wednesday to follow up on the economic themes he highlighted during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address to Congress.
Wisconsin is a battleground state that Biden won by some 20,600 votes, his slimmest margin over former President Trump, in the 2020 election.
Biden on Wednesday was scheduled to visit the Laborers’ International Union of North America in Deforest, Wisconsin, near Madison.
Biden had pressed Congress to pass the PRO Act, “because workers have a right to form a union” during his speech Tuesday.
The PRO Act, or Protecting Rights to Organize Act, would give workers the right to freely and fairly form a union and bargain together for changes in the workplace, according to the AFL-CIO. It failed to pass in the 117th Congress in 2021.
Biden further said during the State of the Union that during his Administration, “We’ve already created 800,000 good-paying manufacturing jobs, the fastest growth in 40 years.”
At the union center in Wisconsin, Biden plans to meet with workers and apprentices who are learning how to do the jobs being created as a result of major legislation, including the bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Biden on Tuesday ticked off a number of the projects underway thanks to these two laws, including replacing poisonous lead pipes, making sure every community in America has access to high speed internet, building new electric grids that can weather major storms, clean energy initiatives to cut pollution and create jobs, and a goal to build 500,000 electrical charging stations for electric vehicles.
Biden also announced new standards that will require all construction materials used in federal infrastructure projects to be made in America.
After Wisconsin, Biden was scheduled to visit Tampa, Florida on Thursday, to discuss proposals to safeguard Social Security and Medicare, and to lower the cost of health care—other big themes of his State of the Union address.
