President Joe Biden told a welcoming Pittsburgh crowd on Labor Day that he’d be “on the sidelines” but still doing everything he can to help Kamala Harris in her work to help working class people and union members.
Biden, in his “Scranton Joe” element, took on the role that Vice Presidents usually play in a presidential campaign — attack dog. And the target of his attack was GOP presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump, his longtime nemesis.
President Biden: Do you think Donald Trump gives a damn about your pensions? Do you think he cares about all the work you do every day? Hell, he’d rather cross a picket line than walk one. Well, I have no problem walking the picket line and nor does Kamala pic.twitter.com/YWyQ4DrJD5
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 2, 2024
Addressing labor’s progress, including the big UAW win last summer and federal pension protection help, Biden told the union crowd: “This is not a joke. I said this when I was running in 2020. It’s all at risk because of Donald Trump. Literally. With a stroke of a pen he can get rid of a lot of this. Do you think this guy gives a damn about your pensions? I’m serious. Do you think he loses even an instant of sleep over it? Do you think he cares about all the work you do every day and how hard it is?”
Biden boasted that he and Harris “protected the pensions of over one million workers and retirees,” citing the Butch Lewis Act.
In 2022, according to a White House release, “joined by Teamster President Sean O’Brien, AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler, Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, and Teamster workers and retirees with multiemployer pensions, President Biden announced $36 billion for the Central States Pension Fund, preventing drastic cuts to the hard-earned pensions of over 350,000 union workers and retirees.”
The Butch Lewis Act, passed as part of the American Rescue Plan, funds “multiemployer pension plans across the United States on the verge of insolvency” that would otherwise default on retiree payments.
Making his own experience relevant, Biden, who walked the UAW picket line with the union members, said of Trump, who did not campaign in public on Labor Day: “He regards picket lines — he’d rather cross one than walk one.”
Some objections to the Biden-Harris pension protections, as seen in the comment featured below, accuse union leaders of failing to protect their workers, pointing the finger at the labor side rather than employers facing bankruptcy or otherwise rendered incapable of meeting their financial obligations to retirees.
American taxpayers paid for these pensions after the union leaders mismanaged their benefits
— Hi, I'm KellyJo 🙋🏽♀️🇺🇸 (@BiologicalWoma2) September 2, 2024
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