Vice President Kamala Harris to visit Philadelphia next week
It's the second time in two months that the vice president has come to the city to highlight the Biden administration's focus on infrastructure and labor.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/pmn/GLN4MAKI25E5XPOIBI7L5556FI.jpg)
Vice President Kamala Harris is to travel to Philadelphia on Tuesday to announce a new initiative for workers and highlight the Biden administration’s focus on infrastructure.
Further details on her visit have not yet been released, but the trip marks Harris’ second trip in just two months to Philadelphia — long a Democratic stronghold and a hub for organized labor — to tout the impact of the infrastructure law. The legislation and its effects have been a critical component of President Joe Biden’s reelection messaging.
The visit will be the latest of several that Biden and Harris have made to Philadelphia as they ramp up their campaign for a second term by outlining their economic priorities and trying to appeal to middle-class voters. Biden has made six trips to the city this year, and residents can expect to see a lot more of him and the vice president in Pennsylvania, a critical swing state, before November 2024.
The vice president has been a key messenger for the Biden administration on workforce issues and has made more than a dozen stops across the country to meet with workers and labor leaders.
In June, Harris met with the executive board of the Service Employees International Union, who gathered at the Sheraton hotel in Center City. She took part in a moderated conversation with top executives from the union, which represents members who work in health care, public service, and janitorial and security services.
Harris, who chairs a White House labor task force, called for higher wages for care workers and decried what she described as the Republican Party’s “extremist” agenda.
“We believe our administration will prove to have been the most union-friendly administration in all of America’s history,” she told the members. “Joe Biden lives, breathes, and cares so deeply about the importance of strengthening and uplifting working people, through strengthening and uplifting labor unions.”
The Pennsylvania GOP was critical of Harris’ planned trip, with chairman Lawrence Tabas saying her stop “will no doubt be long on words, and short on substance.”
“We expect another attempt to fool Pennsylvanians into thinking their life is an economic home run under the Biden administration,” Tabas said in a statement Wednesday. “But time and again, Joe and Kamala’s economic ‘plans’ have left us worse off, and I believe Pennsylvanians will demonstrate, at the polls in 2024, that they’re not buying what Joe and Kamala are selling.”
Biden visited the Philly Shipyard last month to highlight green energy projects and pitch “Bidenomics,” his economic plan. In March, he unveiled a $6.8 trillion federal spending proposal at a Northeast Philadelphia union training site. And last spring, Harris rallied with several hundred supporters at the Sheet Metal Workers Local 19 headquarters along the Delaware River.
During that trip, she promoted the $1 trillion federal infrastructure spending law, saying it would create thousands of jobs for union workers like carpenters and plumbers. She also announced a new program by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration aimed at protecting workers in dozens of high-risk industries from heat-related injuries.
“Philadelphia, for myself, for President Biden, and I know for so many of you, this is what it all comes down to: dignity, and dignity of work,” she said at the time. “The president and I will always stand with you … and our administration will do everything in our power to ensure the workers of our nation can succeed and thrive.”