We are just one hundred days from the general election, so I thought it would be a good time to revisit the stakes. This moment has taken on enormous significance because it is not just about right now. It’s not just about the next four years. It’s about how we rebuild after our country has been ravaged. Old companies are dying by the dozen and millions have lost their jobs. What we do now will echo forward in time. We will set in motion the economy of the future, catapulting us to new heights and cementing us as the leader of the free world or we will try to reanimate the decaying corpse of the economy of yesteryear and we will fade away. People will speak of Pax Americana and the pre-eminence of a free society as a golden age of years past or they will revel in the new places it will take us.
President Trump has both changed the global image of us and weakened us to the point that the US is scarcely recognizable as the country it was 4 years ago. His administration has pushed to weaken environmental standards and subsidize dying industries. The future is an uncertain place, so he looks to grasp at the fading past. Rather than solving problems, he wishes only to blame others. Even in a moment bigger than anyone could have imagined, he has spent more time trying to deflect responsibility than deflect a deadly disease from infecting American citizens. Other countries are beginning to recover while we are plumbing new depths. If he is re-elected, our prospects are dim.
Vice President Biden is not a new figure on the political scene, but he has released a new plan that is what this moment requires. He would seek to modernize our infrastructure and spur growth in new clean industries that are rising to prominence at the expense of those Trump would attempt to revive. By investing in these industries now, we will ensure that we have the skilled workers to implement and improve them later. We will keep the intellectual property here and the innovation here. We will set ourselves up for success no matter what else happens because we will be investing in the human capital of our own citizens and attracting the best and the brightest of global citizens to come live here.