Biden emphasizes Black-owned business progress, lead pipe replacement in Milwaukee

WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) – President Joe Biden spoke at the Wisconsin Black Chamber of Commerce in Milwaukee today. He highlighted, among other things, 4,700 loans valued at $1.5 billion to Black-owned businesses that the Small Business Administration backed in the last fiscal year.

“I’m here to celebrate the progress we’re making for black small businesses here and around the country,” Biden started. “We’re doing it by building the economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down.”

In the 2021 infrastructure bill, $15 billion was included to replace lead piping across the U.S. The president toured Hero Plumbing, one of the companies that has been contracted to do the work.

Biden claims that the original plan would have taken 60 years to change out all the necessary pipes in Milwaukee.  However, he said his administration proposed a new rule that would “require the water systems in Milwaukee to be fully replaced, every one of them, within ten years.”

Wisconsin voted for Biden in the 2020 election, but concerns about the economy are cited as a reason the state is considered a toss-up for the 2024 election. Touting these initiatives looks to be a concerted effort to shift negative perception about the president’s handling of the economy despite historic employment numbers and inflation subsiding from 9.1% to 3.2% in just over a year.

“[When] the middle class does well and we all do well,” Biden concluded. “We’re leaving no one behind.”

The Associated Press was used as a source in this story.

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