BALTIMORE — With an eye on the 2024 elections, President Joe Biden repeatedly urged U.S. House Democrats meeting Wednesday evening in Baltimore to help the party claim credit for various initiatives, including a massive infrastructure package and gun safety measures.
“Folks are going to understand what you’ve done. We’re going to make sure of it,” he said. “There’s so much more to do, though,” said the Democratic president, citing immigration reform and his push to restore an expanded child tax credit, among other issues.
Biden addressed the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference during a period in which members of his administration have been on the road touting bipartisan successes. The suggestion by the president and other Democrats is that Americans are not yet aware or appreciative of signature achievements such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law approved by Congress in November 2021.
In Baltimore, that legislation is largely funding a $6 billion, multiyear project to replace a 4-mile section of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, including the mile-long, 19th-century B&P Tunnel near Penn Station.
“It’s going to change transportation,” Biden said Wednesday. He said he would perpetually receive some credit for the project because red, white and blue signs were being created that read: “President Joe Biden. Frederick Douglass Tunnel.”
He held up one of the signs for the audience.
Biden’s Marine One helicopter landed at Fort McHenry at 6:04 p.m., and he was whisked by motorcade downtown, arriving at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore-Inner Harbor at 6:20 p.m. The street was filled with people taking photos and waving flags. One man held a sign over his head that read, “STOP ARMING UKRAINE.”
Biden started speaking at 6:41 p.m. in front of a row of American flags facing tables of House Democrats in the vast Constellation Ballroom.
“It’s good to be almost home,” said Biden, who represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate for years.
Biden was introduced by House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Speaking before Jeffries, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore criticized congressional Republicans for using the threat of a national debt default to compel spending cuts.
“That’s not patriotic,” Moore said. “That’s irresponsible and that is reckless.”
Biden returned to that theme in his speech, saying the GOP is “threatening our economic recovery by manufacturing a crisis.”
Offering a preview Wednesday afternoon of their three-day conference, the House Democrats said they plan to strategize about issues — from abortion to the debt limit — with an eye on regaining control of the House in the 2024 elections.
Republicans seized a narrow House majority in the 2022 midterm elections. Among the scheduled sessions at the conference is one Thursday called “The Path to Win Back the Majority in 2024.”
“We need to take back that gavel. We’re at 213, so five more,” Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington state, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told reporters in the afternoon.
The Democrats’ blueprint before 2024 includes “making sure we can come together on an agenda that can continue moving the American family forward and to stop stupid stuff from Republicans,” said Rep. Ted Lieu, vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus.
Halting that “stuff,” the California Democrat said, means preventing a national abortion ban and increasing the debt limit “so that our economy does not experience a significant negative shock.”
The “People Over Politics” summit, which is not open to the public, is also to include sessions on gun violence prevention, growing the economy and U.S.-Mexico border issues. The agenda lists “an armchair conversation” Thursday with Vice President Kamala Harris.
It comes as Biden warns of possible House Republican cuts to health care programs, a message he delivered at his State of the Union address on Feb. 7 and again Tuesday in a speech in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
House Republicans have accused Biden of using scare tactics.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, has said cuts to Social Security and Medicare should not be considered as the parties negotiate over the debt limit and spending.
Biden’s administration and other Democrats say the GOP has signaled otherwise.
The president on Wednesday referenced his State of the Union speech, during which he sought to compel Republicans to commit to not trimming Social Security. Many GOP members heeded his call to literally “stand up for seniors” in the House chamber.
“Maybe they found religion,” he said.
The president called out during his 28-minute speech to California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, a Baltimore native, in the audience, calling her “the greatest speaker of all time.” Pelosi lost the speakership when the GOP took over the chamber in January.
After Biden’s remarks, conference organizers ushered reporters out of the ballroom, as the president began taking questions from representatives.
The president’s motorcade back to Fort McHenry passed M&T Bank Stadium, which was lit with red, white and blue lights. He flew back to Washington after 2 1/2 hours in Baltimore.
Rep. Kweisi Mfume, a Baltimore Democrat, said Wednesday afternoon that “virtually every Republican budget or fiscal plan over the past decade has included repeal of the Affordable Care Act and deep cuts to Medicaid.”
Congressional lawmakers must reach an agreement on the debt ceiling, the money the U.S. can borrow to pay its obligations.
Other sessions on the Baltimore conference agenda are on abortion and combating anti-Asian hate. The conference includes optional tours of Oriole Park at Camden Yards and the National Aquarium.
Biden was last in the city on Jan. 30 to tout the federal funding to replace the B&P Tunnel. He also has made trips to the Port of Baltimore and to a CNN town hall at Center Stage.
While president, Trump spoke in Baltimore at a similar conference — a Republican retreat — in 2019 and was greeted by protesters as his motorcade sped through the city.
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