Since taking office, the President and Vice President have delivered historic wins for the American people. Game-changing investments have led to a manufacturing boom, spurred record job creation, and helped lower the costs of items that folks rely on most.
These accomplishments have done a great deal to lift up Black and brown people, who for so long have been beaten down by the individual and collective actions of our society. Under the Biden-Harris Administration, Black and Hispanic unemployment rates have hit record lows. And, compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, over 2 million more Hispanic Americans, nearly 900,000 more Asian Americans, and over 750,000 more Black Americans now have jobs. A milestone was reached earlier this year, when it was reported that the Black employment-population ratio had eclipsed that of whites for the first time on record. These strong job gains have placed workers of color on stronger economic footing and helped make the American Dream more attainable for them than it ever has been. Importantly, the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to making child care more accessible and more affordable will continue to help enable workers of color, especially women, to enter and stay in the workforce at these high rates.
The creation of good-paying jobs has been just one tangible result of the President and Vice President’s plan to create opportunity for people of color. Their plan has lowered costs too. Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, seniors on Medicare now pay no more than $35 per month for insulin and will pay no more $2,000 per year on prescription drugs starting in 2025. One of the major provisions of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is already helping more than twenty million American families save on their monthly internet bill. The Biden-Harris Administration is also going after junk fees, including overdraft fees and credit card late fees, which disproportionately affect lower-income households and minority households. These savings all add up and will help make it easier for families to get by and ultimately save for the future.
Despite all of this, a number of recent polls, including a New York Times/Siena College poll released last month, suggest that working class voters of color are not as enthusiastic about the 2024 Biden-Harris ticket as one would expect. Economic concerns, along with others, have been identified as being top-of-mind for those voters. It would be a mistake to conclude that even with the monumental progress that the President and Vice President have championed since taking office, there are not still folks struggling to make it by. The President himself acknowledged that very point in a speech last month, when he made clear that he was not “here to declare victory on the economy.” Indeed, as he pointed out, “we have more work to do.”
Driven from day one to help ease the pain that working class people of color have been feeling, the President and Vice President have made it a priority to deliver relief to those who most need it. That is why they enacted a historic expansion of the Child Tax Credit as a part of the American Rescue Plan, which put cash in pockets and helped reduce Black child poverty by over 50%. Longer term, their administration has been pushing to help release borrowers from the crushing impacts of debt, whether medical debt, student debt, or otherwise.
President Biden and Vice President Harris have taken all of these steps and delivered all of these accomplishments in the face of stiff Republican obstructionism. Every single Republican in Congress voted against the American Rescue Plan and the Inflation Reduction Act. The Administration’s historic student debt relief plan was struck down by conservative justices on the Supreme Court. On another top-of-mind issue to working class voters of color – crime – Republicans continue to refuse to entertain additional gun reform beyond the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
Nevertheless, the President and Vice President continue to fight for all Americans, especially people of color working hard to provide for their families. They are hard at work overseeing the implementation of their administration’s historic investments, which will only further increase economic opportunity over the coming months. They are identifying more and more ways to lower costs and save people money. And they continue to beat the drum on other salient issues, calling on Congress seemingly daily to pass legislation that strengthens access to the ballot box and legislation that keeps communities safe – just as Vice President Harris has been doing on her ongoing Fight for our Freedoms College Tour.
Like President Biden, I do believe that we have more work to do to make real the American Dream for all people in our nation. With the President and Vice President in the White House, I am confident that work will continue. But whether it continues until 2025 or until 2029 is up to us.
Gevin Reynolds is a former speechwriter to Vice President Kamala Harris. He is a first-year law student at Yale University.