In a meeting with dozens of U.S. governors at the White House on Friday, President Joe Biden told state leaders he needed their cooperation to continue to implement trillions of dollars of legislation passed in his first two years, quipping that they have “a lot more to do” and “almost too much to work with.”
During an annual meeting of the bipartisan National Governors Association, Biden marked a new phase of federal-state partnership, first thanking governors for their previous help in pulling the country out of the pandemic using the funds from the sweeping COVID-19 relief bill passed early on in his presidency.
State revenues grew after that bill, Biden said Friday, after they were projected to decline by about three percent, on average.
“We urged you to use the money and most of you did that,” he said. “To make your communities safer, deal with affordable housing, get small businesses back on their feet, to train your workforce – and you did.”
Now, Biden said, there’s “a lot more to do” that is bipartisan, pointing, for example, to the $1.2 trillion infrastructure law and the funding to make semiconductors in the United States.
"We can disprove that we are a broken system, that we are too extreme and divided to get anything done," he said.
Joining Biden at the White House Friday were the Republican and Democratic governors of 37 states and territories, including Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper this week told Spectrum News he supports President Biden’s likely 2024 run for reelection, adding that his new focus on implementing legislation is apt.
“He got a lot accomplished in the first two years,” Cooper said. “He needs to spend a lot of time, and his administration needs to spend a lot of time, making sure it’s done the right way.”
Cooper added that the topic of “divided government” would come up during the governors’ Washington gathering this week, since many state legislative majorities differ from that of the state executive office.
Biden, for his part, acknowledged the overwhelming amount of funds going out to states and localities this year.
“We have, in a sense … almost too much to work with, because we got a lot we’ve got to get done that we've already passed,” he said.
The president has been sharply criticized by Republicans for spending too much at the federal level, and they have threatened to withhold a vote to raise the debt ceiling if the Biden administration does not agree to spending cuts.
One example they use is the $740 billion climate, health care and tax bill that Democrats passed last year with no GOP support.
“No more blank checks for runaway spending,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., wrote on Twitter Friday.
The president Friday said he believed the federal government “can be fiscally responsible without threatening our country or dealing with chaos.”
“We’ve never reneged on our debt,” he added.