To tout a new green energy factory driven by incentives he signed into law last year, President Biden traveled on July 6 to a district in South Carolina represented by Joe Wilson, one of the most conservative Republicans in Congress.
While there, Biden announced he’d be attending the groundbreaking of another green energy factory in the Georgia district of Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican bomb-thrower who wants to impeach him.
“Some analysis has said that the laws I've signed are doing more to help red America than blue America,” Biden said during his July 6 speech in West Columbia, SC. “That's okay with me. We’re all Americans.”
To some extent, Biden is modeling the bipartisanship he promised while campaigning in 2020. But he may be also doing Republicans a favor by delivering some of the goodies that make their constituents feel better without forcing the legislators to vote for politically unpopular "big government."
Biden has signed three momentous pieces of legislation that are transforming important parts of the US economy: a $550 billion infrastructure law in 2021, the $50 billion CHIPS Act in 2022, and shortly after that, a $370 billion green-energy package. Some of the money is direct government spending, while there are also tax breaks and other incentives to lure private capital into semiconductor manufacturing, a green energy buildout, and other Biden priorities.
That gusher of money is beginning to flow, and Biden is touring the country to make sure voters connect new factories and jobs with “Bidenomics.” The White House says private-sector firms have invested $503 billion in new manufacturing facilities since Biden took office. Much of that is in response to incentives contained in the new laws. Another $225 billion in federal infrastructure spending has gone out the door under Biden. There’s more coming since the three big bills Biden signed could stimulate spending for a decade.
Much of the new investment is ending up in red states and districts. A Brookings Institution analysis from mid-June found that half of the private investment Biden is bragging about is going into counties Donald Trump won in the 2020 election, even though those counties account for only 28% of GDP. Trump country is benefiting disproportionately from laws Biden signed with little to no Republican support.
That’s not because of any red-leaning bias in the legislation itself. Since it’s private money, the government isn't steering it toward any particular part of the country. Instead, private-sector investors are choosing locations with cheaper non-union labor, affordable housing and energy, relatively low taxes, and plenty of workers. That leads to a lot of southern states that have voted Republican for decades, such as South Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Louisiana.
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An investment boom in red states bears no overt political benefit to Biden. Forecasters think the 2024 presidential election will hinge on just a half-dozen swing states or fewer, just as the 2020 election did. They include Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, and perhaps Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Biden says South Carolina is gaining $11 billion in new investment due to incentives he signed into law. Yet Donald Trump carried the state by a nearly 12% margin in 2020, and there’s no chance it will vote Democratic in 2024.
In his July 6 speech, Biden highlighted Ohio, where Intel is building a $20 billion semiconductor factory that will generate thousands of relatively high-paying jobs. But Ohio is no longer viewed as a swing state and is likely to go Republican in 2024 as well. An Ohio Senate seat held by Democrat Sherrod Brown, who’s up for reelection, is rated one of the easiest flips for Republicans.
Georgia is a beneficiary of Biden’s legislation, with several electric vehicle and battery plants springing up recently. And it did go his way in 2020. But Georgia also has a popular Republican governor and it has been growing faster than the nation as a whole for years. Georgia swing voters may not necessarily think a new factory here or there is Biden’s doing, and state officials can say it's because of their own efforts to lure businesses.
The Rust Belt is also seeing a spurt of new investment in battery factories and plants related to electric vehicles, but those are concentrated in Michigan, likely a safe Democratic state. Swingy Pennsylvania, by contrast, looks to be underrepresented on the Biden administration’s manufacturing heat map, with a handful of new projects expected to bring fewer than 1,000 new jobs.
As he travels the country, Biden is making a point of calling out Republicans who voted against his legislation yet represent states and districts gaining jobs and new investment from it. He’s obviously hoping voters will notice the hypocrisy of Republicans who oppose everything Biden does yet brag to constituents about bringing home the goods from Washington — goods that Democrats sent, not Republicans.
Yet Republicans might benefit from this strategy more than Biden and his fellow Democrats. Many Republican voters still consider Donald Trump their party leader, despite two impeachments, his role riling up rioters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, two criminal indictments, and never-ending lies about nonexistent fraud in the 2020 election. Ethical purity is not a Republican job requirement, and few GOP voters seem likely to punish their elected officials for publicly opposing government goodies, while privately cheering when it benefits them.
Some members of Congress know they’ll benefit from a legislative outcome even if they don’t vote for it. That’s a time-tested way of standing against something in principle, to appease constituents, while knowing there won’t be a political price for it. Barack Obama famously did this as a senator in 2006 when he voted against raising the federal borrowing limit, knowing Republicans who controlled the Senate would muster enough votes to pass it. Five years later, as president, Obama described that as “a political vote, as opposed to doing what was important for the country.” It didn’t stop him from winning the presidency, twice. Voters have short memories, which is why Republicans are unlikely to worry when the current president comes to town to pitch Bidenomics.
Correction: An earlier version of this story referred to Congresswoman Majorie Taylor Greene's South Carolina District. The Congresswoman represents Georgia's 14th Congressional district. We regret the error.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @rickjnewman
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