KRDO 2020 Voter Guide: Joe Biden
Former Vice President Joe Biden is the Democratic candidate for president in the November general election after prevailing through a crowded primary field earlier this year. Biden is no stranger to the White House, having served as President Barack Obama's second in command for 8 years. Biden's running mate is California Sen. Kamala Harris.
What is your specific timeline for controlling COVID-19 in 2021?
Biden's campaign response to KRDO: As President, Joe Biden will be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives because we cannot get the country moving until we control the virus. He will listen to the science and the public health experts. He will promote masks and social distancing. He will use the full Defense Production Act to get masks and protective gear to every healthcare worker, job site, school in this country and he will appoint a Supply Commander to make sure it’s distributed fairly. He will create a Pandemic Testing Board, modeled on FDR’s War Production Board, to get tens of millions of testing kits where they are needed. He will build a Public Health Jobs Corps – hiring at least 100,000 Americans to perform contact tracing for COVID-19 cases; and to work on environmental health issues, the opioid crisis, and other health inequities, long term. He will provide free testing, treatment, and vaccines for everyone – and build on the Affordable Care Act with a public option, so everyone can get quality care now, and long after this pandemic ends. And he will chart a clear path forward for a safe and effective vaccine – investing $25 billion in manufacturing and distribution to guarantee it gets to every American.
It is impossible to know what the state of the COVID-19 pandemic will be on the day Biden takes office, but if elected, Biden won’t wait to take action. More than 176,000 Americans have died. This President has shown no remorse, no compassion, no grief, and no leadership. Experts at Columbia University determined that if social distancing measures had been taken just one week earlier, 36,000 Americans would still be alive. We need a President who will listen to science, tell the American people the truth, and do the work to get this virus under control.
How do you restore confidence in the economy across all socioeconomic classes, and not just for the top earners?
Biden's campaign response to KRDO: America has been knocked down. Unemployment is at its highest since the Great Depression, millions have lost their jobs, hours, pay, health care, or the small businesses they started. But the truth is: Long before COVID-19, millions of people were already locked out of an economy that rewards wealth over work, and helps too few struggling Americans make ends meet. Women, Black, Latino, and Native Americans and immigrants have never had a full seat at the table.
Biden believes this is no time to just build back to the way things were before, with the old economy’s structural weaknesses and inequalities still in place. This is the moment to imagine and build a new American economy for our families and the next generation.
An economy where every American enjoys a fair return for their work and an equal chance to get ahead. An economy more vibrant and more powerful precisely because everybody will be cut in on the deal.
We have to build back better, for the future. That starts by beating this pandemic, reopening safely, and getting real economic relief out to working families. The only way we get our economy back on track is with an effective plan to beat this virus. A safe, strong reopening requires a President who does the work -- who doesn’t just hang an “Open for Business” sign and shut his eyes. But that’s just the start.
Vice President Joe Biden has a bold plan to create millions of good-paying jobs with a choice to join a union, mobilize the American people in service of four bold, national efforts to address four great national challenges. This includes revitalizing American manufacturing and strengthening our innovation base – so the future is made in America; building a clean-energy economy and resilient, modern infrastructure; strengthening our care and early education workforce – easing the squeeze for working families, and putting millions to work caring for children and aging loved ones with better pay, benefits, and training opportunities. And he will make advancing racial equity central to our economic recovery – investing in everything from small businesses to infrastructure to housing to education to close the racial wealth, jobs, and income gaps, and finally expanding access to opportunity for everyone.
What is your plan to reunify the country amid deep political divisions?
Biden's campaign response to KRDO: Joe Biden has said from the beginning, we’re in a battle for the soul of our nation, and he means it. This country needs healing and the President’s job is to heal. This moment has to be a wake-up call for our nation – and a call-to-action. It’s past time to fully confront systemic racism, to end our growing economic inequality and to deal with the denial of our nation’s promise, to so many, for so long.
He will fight every day to lead those changes – and to listen. He will be a president who tells the truth, who takes responsibility and who in fact invites the opposition to come to the Oval Office and settle problems together. The words of a president matters. And it's about time we start to hear from a president that it's about uniting the country and bringing us together. Joe Biden has done that all my life and he will do it as President.
