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.