NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Wednesday, April 20th, 2022

White House shares more details for President Joe Biden’s upcoming PNW visit

Today, White House Press Sec­re­tary Jen Psa­ki offered addi­tion­al details con­cern­ing Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s forth­com­ing trip to the Pacif­ic North­west, which begins tomor­row (Thurs­day, April, 21st) with a stop in Port­land, Ore­gon and will end on Fri­day (April 22nd) after mul­ti­ple events in Seat­tle, Washington.

At the dai­ly White House press brief­ing, Psa­ki made pub­lic an ini­tial list of sup­port­ing speak­ers at Biden’s offi­cial events and elab­o­rat­ed on the themes for each. Here’s a tran­script of her com­ments at the top of the briefing:

As you know, the Pres­i­dent is head­ed to the West Coast tomor­row, and I want­ed to give you a quick pre­view of his first trip to Ore­gon and Wash­ing­ton. He will high­light the his­toric eco­nom­ic growth and near­ly 8 mil­lion jobs cre­at­ed as a result of his and con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats’ actions, includ­ing the Amer­i­can Res­cue Plan and Bipar­ti­san Infra­struc­ture Law, and his work to low­er costs.

He will vis­it Port­land Inter­na­tion­al Air­port tomor­row to high­light crit­i­cal invest­ments to ensure stronger, more resilient infra­struc­ture, such as an earth­quake-resilient run­way at the Port­land Air­port, and to help low­er costs on every­day items by ensur­ing goods can move faster and more efficiently.

Gov­er­nor Kate Brown, Sen­a­tors Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, and Con­gress­man Kurt Schrad­er will join the Pres­i­dent at the airport.

On Fri­day, he will mark Earth Day in Seat­tle, Wash­ing­ton, by speak­ing to the need to bol­ster our nation’s resilience in the face of threats like wild­fire, and the need to rapid­ly deploy clean ener­gy. He will be joined at the event by Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee.

The Pres­i­dent will also dis­cuss how he is fight­ing to bring down pre­scrip­tion drug costs, such as insulin, where he will be joined by Gov­er­nor Inslee, Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell, and Con­gress­woman Kim Schrier.

The Pres­i­dent will call on Con­gress to pass his plan to low­er pre­scrip­tion drug prices and ener­gy costs, but he’s not wait­ing for Con­gress to act. And he will high­light recent actions he’s tak­en to low­er ener­gy and health­care costs, and give fam­i­lies more breath­ing room.

This will be Biden’s first vis­it as Pres­i­dent to Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon. Biden pre­vi­ous­ly stopped in Ida­ho last year enroute to events in Cal­i­for­nia.

After this week, the Pres­i­dent will have set foot in each of the three states of the great Pacif­ic North­west. Also on Biden’s itin­er­ary, accord­ing to Axios, are mul­ti­ple DNC fundrais­ers, the details of which have not been pub­licly announced.

I remarked last Fri­day that it would be unlike­ly that Biden would appear in Seat­tle to talk about grow­ing Amer­i­ca’s clean ener­gy econ­o­my with­out Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, who is one of the coun­try’s best known cli­mate action champions.

Today’s announce­ment by the White House con­firms that Gov­er­nor Inslee will indeed be on hand for Biden’s vis­it, as I had guessed. And so will Sen­a­tors Mur­ray and Cantwell plus Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kim Schri­er, who is one of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee’s front­line members.

Mur­ray and Schri­er’s reelec­tion cam­paigns are the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s top pri­or­i­ty this year. Each has already won mul­ti­ple cam­paigns against Repub­li­can oppo­nents. Mur­ray is 5–0 in U.S. Sen­ate cam­paigns, while Schri­er is 2–0 in U.S. House cam­paigns. (Mur­ray and Schri­er share the dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing each defeat­ed peren­ni­al Repub­li­can can­di­date Dino Rossi in a fed­er­al-lev­el race.)

While NPI’s research has con­sis­tent­ly shown Mur­ray to be ahead of her Repub­li­can oppo­nent Tiffany Smi­ley, Schri­er’s dis­trict, the 8th, is a tossup dis­trict that is rather even­ly divid­ed between Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can vot­ers. It’s not expect­ed to be an easy hold for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

We look for­ward to bring­ing you more details about Pres­i­dent Biden’s trip to the Pacif­ic North­west here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate in the hours to come.

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