President Joe Biden visited New York and New Jersey on Tuesday to view flood damage from Hurricane Ida that killed 52 in the Northeast – and had to endure angry hecklers as he sought to provide comfort to suffering families.
Biden also warned that the nation was now experiencing extreme weather in ‘real time’ and once again pitched his infrastructure plan as a way to rebuild, saying scientists are warning ‘this is code red.’
Biden met with state and local leaders and planning to tour devastation in the area, just days after the visiting storm-ravaged neighborhoods near New Orleans and on the Louisiana Gulf coast.
There were signs of the political obstacles he faces even amid a disaster visit where he tried to make a unifying statement that ‘we’re in this together.’
After landing at John F. Kennedy airport in Queens, Biden was met by jeers and profane signs from a group of angry Trump supporters as his motorcade rolled through New Jersey
One red, white and blue flag said “F*** Biden’ with a sub-heading that read: ‘And F*** You for voting For Him.’ A school-age boy at a protest along the route was photographed from the motorcade giving the president the finger – just as a line worker in a yellow vest did in Louisiana Friday.
Biden toured flood damage in the Manville, New Jersey neighborhood of Lost Valley, but couldn’t escape hecklers there, either.
A man with a Trump flag and a woman could be heard yelling while Biden and politicians met with area victims. ‘It’s a shame … Despicable!’ one yelled.
‘Resign, you tyrant!’ yelled a heckler.
‘We will leave you guys behind!’ yelled one person, in an apparent slap at the Afghanistan pullout.
One man on a property with a Trump flag hanging outside yelled out: ‘Hey Newsmax, can we year you? OAN,’ naming two conservative pro-Trump networks.
The angry attacks were captured on C-Span video of the event.
It was a jarring contrast to the images of healing and assistance the White House sought to project by scheduling a tour of homes, some of which were obliterated by the remnants of Hurricane Ida.
One woman who spoke to Biden said her family only avoided flood damage and an eventual explosion thought to be connected to a gas leak after a neighbor called with a warning, since she and her husband have a four-month old baby.
‘We only left early just because we had a baby,’ the woman said, after Biden connected her with traveling reporters who had yelled out a question.
‘Thank God you’re safe. Help you rebuild and figure this out,’ Biden added.
Earlier, Biden spoke about extreme weather and the risks posed by climate change.
‘Every part of the country, every part of the country is getting hit by extreme weather,’ Biden said Tuesday. ‘We’re now living in real-time what the country’s going to look like,’ mentioning disasters that have hit Louisiana, Mississippi, California, Idaho the Northeast, and other areas.
‘We can’t turn it back very much, but we can prevent it from getting worse,’ he said, referencing actions to deal with climate change.
President Joe Biden is greeted by New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and others as he arrives for briefing about the impact of Hurricane Ida, Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021, in Hillsborough Township, N.J. ‘Climate change is here. We’re living through it now,’ said Biden
A person yells from a backyard as another person holds a Trump flag as President Joe Biden tours a neighborhood impacted by Hurricane Ida. Biden was repeatedly heckled during the event
HECKLING AND HUGS: Jeers from opponents and Trump supporters could be heard by traveling reporters and on a video feed as President Biden flew to New Jersey to provide comfort to storm victims
President Joe Biden, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), New York Governor Kathy Hochul and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) visit a neighborhood impacted by flood damage from the remnants of Hurricane Ida in Queens
Biden didn’t mention Ocasio-Cortez by name when he thanked lawmakers. He apologized afterward, saying he ‘didn’t get to all the names’
‘We either act or we’re going to be in real, real trouble, our kids are going to be in trouble,’ said Biden.
‘For decades, scientists have warned extreme weather would be more extreme and climate change was here, and we’re living through it now. We don’t have any more time, he said.
‘You really took a hit,’ he told responders and local officials, including Gov. Phil Murphy. The losses we witnessed were profound.’
Biden spoke as he received a briefing from local officials in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey about flood damage and a tornado that ripped through a 13-mile stretch.
At one point, FEMA Director Deanne Criswell apologized if she was mispronouncing any of the names of townships and counties getting an infusion of federal funds after suffering damage.
‘It’s okay as long as you send the money,’ quipped Biden.
‘I bring a checkbook, Mr. President, that you gave me,’ she replied.
After visiting New Jersey, Biden toured storm damage in the Queens borough of New York City, where there were a series of tragic drownings in basement apartments as Ida plowed through the area.
This time, he surrounded himself with New York lawmakers including Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the left wing firebrand and Green New Deal coauthor who has taken on establishment figures in New York and nationwide.
He did not mention AOC’s name during his speech, though following remarks in Queens he apologized to Schumer, saying he ‘didn’t get to all the names. I apologize.’
He described climate change as a dire threat. ‘The storms are going to get worse and worse and worse. And so folks, we’ve got to listen to the scientists, and the economists, and the national security experts. They all tell us this is code red. The nation and the world are in peril.’
He spoke of tall shoreline buildings that are starting to tilt, and subways that have been inundated during storms, as well as low-income residents who have lost possessions and are now desperate for aid.
‘We’re not leaving. We’re going to continue to shout as long as it takes,’ Biden said.
Biden lauded Schumer as someone who was pushing his economic agenda through Congress. Near the end of his remarks in New York, Schumer pointed out a young boy on a balcony overhead. He then spoke to the seven-year old boy on an elevated balcony.
‘The thing about America, every time we end up with a problem, going into a serious circumstance, we come out better than we went in. That’s because we’re so diverse. That’s America,’ he said.
Then he quipped to the boy: ‘and don’t jump!’
Biden pledged that relief would be ‘equitable’ so that ‘those hardest hit get what they need.’
President Biden got an update on storm recovery efforts in Hillsborough Township, New Jersey
President Joe Biden talks to U.S. Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12) after arriving at JFK Airport in New York City, to tour hurricane-affected areas in New York and New Jersey, U.S., September 7, 2021
In this image taken through the window of a moving vehicle, people protest as the motorcade for President Joe Biden passes by as he heads to a briefing about the impact of Hurricane Ida, Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021, in Hillsborough Township, N.J.
In this image taken through the window of a moving vehicle, people protest as the motorcade for President Joe Biden passes by as he heads to a briefing about the impact of Hurricane Ida, Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021, in Hillsborough Township, N.J. Some people gave Biden the finger, and a sign said ‘F*** Biden’
Sam Catrambone clears debris away from a friends home that was damaged by a tornado in Mullica Hill, New Jersey on September 2, 2021 after record-breaking rainfall brought by the remnants of Storm Ida swept through the area
President Joe Biden (C) greets a person as he tours a neighborhood affected by Hurricane Ida in Manville, New Jersey on September 7, 2021
Biden(C) hugs a young boy as he tours the area
Police and residents prepare for a visit by President Joe Biden to a neighborhood in Queens that saw heavy damage and loss of life
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell(L) joins US President Joe Biden(C) as they tour a neighbourhood affected by Hurricane Ida in Manville
President Joe Biden talks with a person as he tours a neighborhood impacted by Hurricane Ida, Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021, in Manville, N.J. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., right, and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., left, And Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J. jointed him
Biden seemed convinced that Democrats would back his infrastructure bill as he departed the White House Tuesday morning to survey hurricane damage in New Jersey and New York.
‘Is the sun going to come out tomorrow?’ he answered when asked if members of his party would support the infrastructure bill making its way through Congress.
During a brief chat with reporters the president made the case that the bill would solve future storm-related problems.
‘I’m hoping to be able to see the things we are going to be able to fix permanently with the bill that we have in for infrastructure,’ he said.
The president and first lady were back at work Tuesday morning after spending the long weekend at home in Delaware.
Biden and senior Democrats are currently trying to find a way to push his $3.5trillion budget through Congress.
The plan includes huge investments in trying to flight climate change, and last week he said the recent storms were proof that his spending spree should be approved.
Republicans have said the plan will be paid for by tax hikes and spark further and inflation and moderate Democrats have vowed to reject the deal until a smaller package is passed.
President Joe Biden spoke to reporters as he left the White House Tuesday morning. He’s traveling to New Jersey and New York to survey Hurricane Ida damage
‘Is the sun going to come out tomorrow?’ he answered when asked if members of his party would support the infrastructure bill making its way through Congress
President Joe Biden salutes as he boards Air Force One Tuesday morning traveling to New Jersey and New York
Residents watch a worker picking up debris that have not yet been cleared in Passaic, New Jersey on Monday
After flying in to John F. Kennedy International Airport this morning Biden will head to Manville, New Jersey, where he’ll be briefed by local leaders on Hurricane Ida’s devastating impact and tour the area.
The remnants of Hurricane Ida swept the Northeast last week and killed at least 46 people, including 27 in New Jersey alone.
Biden’s second stop will be in the New York City borough of Queens, where 11 people died last Wednesday after record-breaking landfall. Across Brooklyn and Queens 13 people died, including a toddler and his parents who drowned when their basement apartment flooded.
There the president will address the country on his Hurricane Ida response before heading back to the White House.
Meanwhile Dr. Jill Biden is joining millions of teachers across the country in welcoming students back to in-person learning after the COVID pandemic upended the American education system.
The first lady is returning to Northern Virginia Community College, where she has worked since 2009.
Dr. Biden is the first first lady to leave the White House and log hours at a full-time job.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden returned to the White House on Monday night after arriving from Delaware on Marine One
The Bidens crossed the South Lawn of the White House after they landed back at the White House after Labor Day – as more than seven million Americans lost their federal COVID pandemic unemployment benefits
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden arrived in Washington on Monday night after spending Labor Day handing out sandwiches in Delaware
‘There are some things you just can’t replace, and I can’t wait to get back in the classroom,’ she recently told Good Housekeeping magazine.
The first lady has been anxious to see her students in person after more than a year of virtual teaching.
The Bidens returned to the White House on Monday night after spending Labor Day in Delaware handing out sandwiches to union members – as more than seven million Americans lost their federal COVID pandemic unemployment benefits.
Biden made a surprise visit to an electrical workers’ union hall on Labor Day where he was all smiles socializing with blue collar workers. A casually dressed President stepped from his dark SUV holding boxes of sandwiches from Capriotti’s, a restaurant chain founded in Wilmington, in his home state of Delaware, in 1976.
Wearing Ray-Ban sun shades, Biden put the boxes on a table alongside other food at an event held by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 313 in New Castle, Delaware.
He shook hands and chatted with the group of mostly men, who were clad in jeans and union T-shirts. Biden spent several minutes chatting with the union members in groups before asking them to join him for sandwiches from a Delaware-founded fast casual chain that were provided for the event.
Flor Sosa stands on the porch of the home she shares with her sister in Manville, N.J. President Biden will tour flood damage in the area this afternoon
Resident Danette Rivera stands by a window that she tried to climb out or as flood waters from Storm Ida rose in her basement apartment in the Woodside neighborhood of Queens in New York. Across all of Queens 11 people died in the flooding
But it came as more than 7million Americans lost their federal unemployment benefits and an additional 3million will stop receiving a $300 weekly boost on checks as emergency COVID payments expire.
The president spoke briefly to reporters as he arrived back at the White House on Monday evening but failed to answer questions about whether the US would recognize the Taliban and what his administration was doing to help Afghans stuck in third countries.
It was a change from Biden’s smiles while talking to union members earlier on Monday. At one point, the president began talking into an iPhone to a union member’s mom, telling her that he’d been with the union since he was first elected to public office in the early 1970s.
The leadership of the IBEW, which represents 700 active members, endorsed Biden for president in February 2020.
‘Mom, I wish you were here. I just stopped by to thank these guys,’ Biden told the parent over the phone. ‘Happy Labor Day.’
‘I just wanted to say ‘hi’ to you,’ the president said before the phone call ended. The entire encounter lasted roughly 30 minutes before Biden returned to his Wilmington residence.
Biden also held an impromptu photo line with the IBEW members before he returned to his home in nearby Wilmington, where he spent the weekend.
‘Thanks, Joe,’ one member said before the group applauded and Biden departed.
President Biden made a surprise visit to a local Delaware electrical workers’ union on Labor Day
The president’s visit lasted roughly 30 minutes before he returned to his Wilmington home
Biden took selfies and shared lunch with the electrical workers as millions of Americans say goodbye to pandemic unemployment benefits that have been a lifeline during COVID
Four types of specialized unemployment payments that were created because of COVID end on Monday.
They are; the Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation ($300 weekly boost on existing payments), Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (for those who already exhausted their state unemployment benefits), Mixed Earners Unemployment Compensation ($100-per-week for people who previously worked as a contractor and employee) and Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (which widened who could apply for unemployment).
Today, 18 months after they were first created, Americans will no longer be able to claim any of them.
Many say the expiry is overdue and that the inflated benefits drove a labor shortage because people could make more money doing nothing than they did in certain jobs.
The end of the payments comes after an abysmal jobs report in August with just 235,000 new jobs added to the economy – 765,000 fewer than the previous month.
The unemployment rate at the start of COVID was the highest on record at nearly 15 percent. It has now dropped below 6 percent again
Both the public and private sectors suffered in COVID-19 with jobs dropping off suddenly as entire industries shut down
The number of people seeking unemployment benefits soared in April 2020
Job growth slowed suddenly in August – the month before the payments were ending – after months of progress. Biden blamed it on the Delta variant and people not getting vaccinated
Biden blamed it on the spread of the Delta variant and the number of people who are still not vaccinated. He then also tried to claim it was proof that his economic recovery plan was working.
Earlier in the summer, he said the incentives were keeping people from rejoining the workforce and told a restaurant owner in Ohio at a town hall in May: ‘We’re ending all of those things that are things keeping people from going back to work.’
President Biden was criticized for allowing the payments to run on for so long and incentivize people not to work
He also told the restaurant owner that he’d have to increase wages if he wanted to entice people back to work.
Some Republican states ended COVID unemployment benefits early in an effort to incentivize people to return to work.
Biden on Monday released a video on Twitter wishing the country a Happy Labor Day and saying he had ‘never been more optimistic about the future of America’ but he did not address the payments expiring.
Jared Bernstein, who sits on the White House Council of Economic Advisers, defended ending the payments.
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He told told the AP, ‘Twenty-two-trillion-dollar economies work in no small part on momentum and we have strong momentum going in the right direction on behalf of the American workforce.’
Some say it is too soon to end the payments and that many industries – like tourism and restaurants – have not yet fully recovered.
They pointed to the fact that economic recovery is slower than expected in America.
‘This will be a double whammy of hardship. We’re not anywhere near done. People still need help. For millions of people nothing has changed from a year and a half ago,’ Jamie Contreras, secretary-treasurer of the SEIU, a union that represents custodians in office buildings and food service workers in airports, said.
‘Letting these benefits expire under the current circumstances and the current uncertainty that we’re experiencing is tantamount to forcing people to fall through the cracks.
Mary Taboniar was a cleaner in a hotel in Hawaii when COVID decimated tourism. She told the AP that she had been relying on the payments, and that her work was still half of what it was in 2019. ‘It’s really scaring me. How can I pay rent if I don’t have unemployment and my job isn’t back?’ she said
‘It’s not just letting people fall through the cracks,’ Rakeen Mabud, chief economist at the progressive research nonprofit Groundwork Collaborative, said to The Hill.
The August job number was the worst since January and it was also down significantly from July, when the economy added 943,000 jobs for an unemployment rate of 5.4%.
‘Disappointing jobs miss and yet President Biden and the Dems remain hell-bent on spending trillions of dollars more and increasing hardworking Americans’ dependency on the federal government,’ tweeted Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty after Biden’s speech.
Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, pointed to the ‘disastrous jobs report,’ noting that it was ‘missing expectations by half a million’ saying ”Jimmy Carter 2.0′ is an understatement’ about Biden.
Florida Republican Rep. Greg Steube said, ‘Biden is tanking the economy.’
Among governors who are not renewing them is the newly-sworn in Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul.
Speaking on Monday, she said unemployed people had to ‘connect the dots’ to find jobs.
‘It’s simply a matter of connecting the dots, connecting the people to the training, connecting them to the positions.
‘That’s something I’ll be laser-focused on because a lot of people are hurting today as a result of the federal government’s not extending the resources and the time frame for this,’ she said.
Some of those affected say it is too soon because their pre-pandemic workloads have not returned.
Mary Taboniar was a cleaner in a hotel in Hawaii when COVID decimated tourism.
She told the AP that she had been relying on the payments, and that her work was still half of what it was in 2019.
‘It’s really scaring me. How can I pay rent if I don’t have unemployment and my job isn’t back?’ she said.
But bosses in the restaurant industry, particularly in New York City, say they need the payments to end to get people back to work.
