Good afternoon. Today to talk about infrastructure and jobs and are clean energy future, but i have to start by speaking about what millions of americans know when they wake up every morning with worry, anxiety and fear. We are still a country in crisis. The pandemic has affected more than 3 million americans. It has cost or than 135,000 lives and climbing and shows no signs of slowing down. In just the last few days, 19 states, 19 states reported florida,ses, including which saw more than 15,000 new cases in a single day. Hospitalizations and deaths, two of the most concerning indicators of trumps failed response, are already unacceptably high and they are rising. It has gotten bad enough that even donald trump finally decided to wear a mask in public. Im glad he made the shift. Mr. President , its not enough. We wont be able to turn the corner and get the American People back to work safely without president ial leadership. Mr. President , open everything now isnt a strategy for success. It is barely a slope. Choiceshing the false between protecting our health and protecting our economy. All it does is endanger our recovery on both fronts. Mr. President , please listen to your Public Health experts instead of denigrating them. Do your job, mr. President , because if we cant deal with the Public Health crisis, we cant deal with the economic crisis or deal with almost 18 million americans who are out of in incredible pain, inflicted on Small Businesses and communities of color. We cant deal with the Climate Crisis that could cost us and cast us into an even darker and more permanent shadow that would loom over the country in the world for a long time. We wont be able to do what americans have always done, come back stronger than ever before, with the grit, toughness, and resilience that characterizes who we are. That is what i want to talk about today. I shared the outlines in my plan to build back better. A bold plan to build an economy of the future, not an economy of the past. The first plank of that plan rejects the defeatist view that automation and globalization mean we cant ensure our future is made in america, with american, goodpaying union jobs here at home making it in america. We clearly can. Today, i am here in wilmington to talk about a second plan, how we can create millions of high paying union jobs by building a modern infrastructure and a clean energy future. These are the most critical investments we can make for the longterm health and vitality of both the American Economy and the physical health and safety of the American People. If we werent facing a pandemic and an economic crisis, we should be making these investments anyway. One in five miles of our highways are still in, quote, Poor Condition according to american engineers. 10 thousands, tens of thousands of bridges are in disrepair, some on the verge of collapse, presenting a clear and present danger to peoples lives. Tens of millions of americans lack access to highspeed broadband. To get our people to work and our kids to school safely, to get our kids to market swiftly, energyr clean entergy revolution, we need to modernize americas infrastructure. Despite this overwhelming need, this president and Republican Congress has simply failed to act. There is no other way of saying it. To continue to break the promises they have made to the American People. Donald trump promised a big infrastructure bill when he ran in 2016. He promised it again in 2017. In 2019 2018, and again. Now, he is promising one again. Weeks, whenvery few he needs a distraction from the latest charges of corruption in his staff or the conviction of highranking members of the administration, the white house announces it is infrastructure week. How many times have you heard him say that . But he has never delivered. He has never really even tried. I know how to get it done. President obama and i inherited an economy in freefall and we prevented another great depression. We enacted the largest infrastructure plan since president eisenhowers interstate highway system. Not only creating good paying jobs and improving the safety and security of people on our roads, we made the largest investment in clean energy in the history of the United States, 90 billion. That put us on a path towards a thriving clean energy economy, powering new Economic Growth and reducing energy costs. Here we are now with an economy in crisis, and with an Incredible Opportunity, not just to build back to where we were before, but better, stronger, more resilient. And more prepared for the challenges that lie ahead. And there is no more consequential challenge that we must meet in the next decade than the onrushing Climate Crisis. Unchecked, it is literally the next existential threat to the health of our planet and our very survival. That is not up for dispute, mr. President. When donald trump thinks about Climate Change, the only word he can muster is hoax. When i think about Climate Change, the word i think of is jobs. Jobs that willon put americans to work making the air cleaner for our kids to breathe, restoring our crumbling roads and bridges and ports, making it faster, cheaper, and transport American Made goods across the world. Jobs, jobs to build and install a network of 500,000 carding stations along our existing and new highways we build across the country. Which will not only help america and american Automobile Industry lead the world and electric vehicles, it will save americans busy billions of dollars over time and the cost of gasoline for their vehicles. The lines for the second Great Railroad revolution, which will not only slash pollution and commute times and it will open up areas connected to metropolitan centers for the first time. When donald trump thinks about renewable energy, he sees windmills somehow causing cancer. When i think about these windmills, icy american manufacturing, American Workers racing to dominate the global market. I see the steel that will be needed for those windmill platform towers and bladders that can be made in small manufacturers like Mcgregor Industries in scranton. Union trade and certified men and women who will manufacture and install it all. I see the ports that will come back to life, the longshoreman, the shipbuilders, the communities they support. When donald trump talks about improving efficiency by retrofitting Lighting Systems with led bulbs, remember what he said . He said he doesnt like led because, quote, the lights no good. I always look orange. End of quote. The light no good. I always look orange. When i think about Energy Retrofitting for lighting, i see the incredible projects like the one right here in the chase center. I see Small Businesses like preferred electric that design and install awardwinning Energy Conservation measures that reduce consumption of electricity and save businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars in energy costs per year. I see electricians and Union Workers who, through apprenticeships, start off with good wages and quality benefits that only grow from there. These investments are a winwinwin for this country, creating jobs, Cutting Energy costs, protecting our climate. That is why today, im releasing my plan to mobilize millions of jobs by building sustainable equitableture and an clean energy future. In my first four years, we are going to give 4 million buildings all across this country the same Energy Makeover that you get here at chase at the chase center. It is going to create at least one million jobs in construction , engineering, and manufacturing in order to get it done. Places, theto make places where we work, we live, improvinghealthier, indoor air quality, water quality. It is going to save tens of billions of dollars in energy costs over time. That is all real. To focust just going on commercial spaces. We are going to give direct support to help families do the same thing for their homes. We are going to offer cash rebates and lowcost financing to upgrade Energy Efficient inefficient windows at appliances to cut energy bills and save thousands of dollars per year. We will make a major investment to build 1. 5 million new Energy Efficient homes and Public Housing will benefit from communities by alleviating the affordable process crisis, and reducing the racial wealth gap linked to homeownership. Usingeek, i talked about the purchasing power of the federal government to reinvigorate the mastic manufacturing. With thehat we will do american Automobile Industry, as well. The United States owned owns and maintains an enormous fleet of vehicles. We are going to convert these government fleets to electric vehicles. Made and sourced right here in the United States of america, with the government providing the demand and grants to retool factories that are struggling to compete. The u. S. Auto industry and its deep banks of suppliers will step up, expanding capacity so the United States, not china, leads the world in clean vehicle production. We are going to make it easier for American Consumers to switch to electric vehicles, as well. Not only by building 500,000 charging stations, but by offering rebates and incentives to swap older fuelefficient vehicles for new, clean, made in america vehicles, saving hundreds of billions of barrels, millions of barrels of oil on an annual basis. This will mean one million new good paying jobs in the Auto Industry. The supply chain and the associated infrastructure needed to get it done. Transformingthat the American Electrical sector to produce power without producing Carbon Pollution and electrifying and increased share of the economy will be the greatest spurring of job creation and economic competitiveness in the 21st century. That is why we will achieve a carbon free pollution Carbon Pollutionfree Energy Sector by 2035. We need to get to work right away. We need scientists and National Labs and landgrant universities, hbcus, to improve neededovate technology to store, generate and transmit clean energy. We need the engineers to design them, the workers to manufacture them, we need iron workers and welders to install them. We will become the Worlds Largest exporter of these technologies, creating even more jobs. We know how to do this. Our administration rescued the Auto Industry and help to retool , made solar energy the same cost as traditional energy, weatherized more than a million homes and we will do it again, but this time, bigger and faster and smarter. Need to this work, we be mindful of the historical wrongs and the damage that American Industries have done in the 20th century, inflicting environmental harm on the poor and vulnerable communities, so often black and brown and native american communities. Toxinsd air and water, raining down from communities, the environmental and health burdens, and they shared none of the prophets. , breathing that air every day, it is poison. That is partly why there are incredible rates of childhood asthma in black and brown communities. Why black americans are almost three times more likely to die of asthma related causes than white americans. It is cancer alley in st. James parish, louisiana. Are cancercausing clusters along route nine in delaware. That is why today, i am also releasing a state of the environment justice policies to build on my existing plan. This is an area of Incredible Opportunity to for Economic Growth for our country and we have to make sure that the first people that benefit from this are the people who were most hurt by it historically in the last century, by the structural disparities that exist. Im setting a goal to make sure that these frontline and fence line communities, whether in rural places or center citys, benefits from the the investments we are making in housing, pollution reduction, and workforce development, and transportation, across the board. We are also going to create jobs for people by cleaning up the environmental hazards that have been abandoned. You saw the front page of the times two days ago. All these places that are going bankrupt, except for the millions millions and of dollars going to ceos. More than a quarter million jobs for doing things like plugging abandoned wells that exist across the country, posing daily threats to the health and safety of our communities. We will hold accountable those ceos and corporations that benefit from decades of subsidies and then walked away from their responsibilities. ,eaving the wells to leak pew,utants to continue to sw Greenhouse Gases flowing into the air on the water. We will not only repealed those subsidies, we will go after those golden parachutes the ceos gave themselves before declaring bankruptcy to make sure the workers receive the benefits and retirement they were promised. Lets create new markets. For our family farmers and our renters. A and our renters. A new civilian climate core to help public lands, to make us less vulnerable to wildfires and floods. Look. These arent pie in the sky dreams. These are actionable policies that we can get to work on right away. We can live up to our responsibilities, meet the challenges of a world at risk of a climate catastrophe, build more climate resilient communities, put millions of skilled workers on the job, and make life markedly better and peopleor the american all at once and benefit the world in the process. The alternative, continue to ignore the facts, deny reality, focus only on technology of the last century instead of the advancing technologies of the century. It is just plain unamerican not to. This is all donald trump and the americans offer. Thatard looking policies will hold back economic promise while other countries race ahead. It is a mindset. It doesnt have any faith in the capacity of the American People to compete, innovate, and to win. It has never been a good bet to bet against the American People. , it will exact a deadly cost. I know better. I know you do, as well. I know what the American People are capable of. I know what American Workers can accomplish when given the room to run. I know the Climate Change, the challenge that is going to define our american future. I know meeting the challenge will be a onceinalifetime opportunity to jolt new life into our economy, send in our global leadership, protect our planet for future generations. If i have the honor of being elected president , we wont just tinker around the edges, we will make historic investments that will seize the opportunity and meet this moment in history. We are going to get to work to deliver the results right away on day one. We are going to reverse trumps rollback of 100 Public Health and environmental rules, then forge a path to greater ambition. We are going to get back into the paris agreement, back into the business of leading the world. We are going to lock in progress and no future president can undercut to take us backward again. Science requires a timetable for measuring progress on climate that isnt three decades or even two. Science tells us we have nine years before the damage is irreversible. Results, in my first four years as president , the jobs we will create, the investments we will make, the irreversible steps we will take to mitigate and adapt to Climate Change and put our nation on the road to net zero emissions no later than 2050. So lets not waste any more time. Lets get to work now. Now. Thank you. Have time for a few questions. The democratic and republican parties in the campaigns of President Trump and joe biden are adjusting plans for next months political conventions, already reshaped by the pandemic. The democrats will convene for a scaledback convention in milwaukee starting august 17. The republicans meet the following week on tuesday, august 25th, in jacksonville, florida, for their convention. The democratic and Republican National conventions come alive on cspan beginning monday, august 17. Watch any on cspan. Org or listen live with the free cspan radio app. Cspan, your unfiltered view of politics. Cspans washington journal. Everyday we take your calls live on the air on the news of the day and we will discuss policy issues that impact you. Coming up wednesday morning, new aboutimesreporter talks economic puzzles of joe biden and the role the economy will play in the campaign. The Pew Charitable trust talks about how the pandemic has impacted the opioid epidemic. Watch washington journal, live at 7 00 eastern wednesday moaning. Join the discussion with you