The WØRD – “Persistence”

From the Chair

MDP Chair Lavora Barnes

Think back to the first months of the Biden administration. The President had laid out a hugely ambitious agenda – an agenda focused on improving the lives of American families by growing the economy from the middle out, lowering costs for families, attacking climate change and rebuilding our infrastructure to meet the challenges of the 21st century – in short, fixing a lot of the failures of the Trump administration.

The critics said he couldn’t do it with his razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate. They pronounced his agenda dead on arrival

He persisted. And he succeeded. He passed the biggest investment in America’s critical infrastructure since the 1950s. He passed the CHIPS Act, spurring the return of computer chip manufacturing to the United States. He passed the first significant gun safety law in decades. And he passed the Inflation Reduction Act – a law providing historic investments in transitioning our economy by attacking climate change, a law that lowered healthcare costs for millions of Americans, and a law that guaranteed that massive corporations wouldn’t be able to use the tax laws to avoid paying income taxes.

Last week marked the one-year anniversary of enactment of that law. To mark the occasion, your party brought together three leaders who have played pivotal roles in enacting and implementing that law: two members of Congress who represent automaking Michigan – Debbie Dingell and Haley Stevens, and Lt. Governor Garland Gilchrist who is on the front lines of putting so much of that law into effect. 

All of them are committed to transforming Michigan’s economy for the future and at the same time making sure Michigan’s incomparable labor force shares in the economic gains that are being created.

On this week’s podcast: a discussion with all three on the anniversary of the IRA: what it has already accomplished, and what it will bring to Michigan in the future.

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