President Joe Biden speaks outside the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton on Wednesday afternoon.
                                 Patrick Kernan | Times Leader

President Joe Biden speaks outside the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton on Wednesday afternoon.

Patrick Kernan | Times Leader

<p>Gov. Tom Wolf speaks at Wednesday’s event, joined, from left, by Rep. Matt Cartwright, Sen. Bob Casey, and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti.</p>
                                 <p>Patrick Kernan | Times Leader</p>

Gov. Tom Wolf speaks at Wednesday’s event, joined, from left, by Rep. Matt Cartwright, Sen. Bob Casey, and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti.

Patrick Kernan | Times Leader

<p>President Joe Biden walks with Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti at Wilkes-Barre Scranton International Airport on Wednesday.</p>
                                 <p>Susan Walsh | AP photo</p>

President Joe Biden walks with Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti at Wilkes-Barre Scranton International Airport on Wednesday.

Susan Walsh | AP photo

<p>President Joe Biden tours the Electric City Trolley Museum with Wayne R. Hiller, executive director and manager of the museum during a visit to his hometown on Wednesday.</p>
                                 <p>Susan Walsh | AP photo</p>

President Joe Biden tours the Electric City Trolley Museum with Wayne R. Hiller, executive director and manager of the museum during a visit to his hometown on Wednesday.

Susan Walsh | AP photo

<p>With a 1926 Philadelphia trolley car as his backdrop, president Joe Biden speaks about his infrastructure plan and his domestic agenda during a visit to the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton on Wednesday.</p>
                                 <p>Susan Walsh | AP photo</p>

With a 1926 Philadelphia trolley car as his backdrop, president Joe Biden speaks about his infrastructure plan and his domestic agenda during a visit to the Electric City Trolley Museum in Scranton on Wednesday.

Susan Walsh | AP photo

SCRANTON — President Joe Biden returned to familiar stomping grounds on Wednesday evening, saying of Scranton that it’s the kind of place that “never really leaves you.”

Biden, who was born in and spent the earliest years of his life in the Electric City, returned to deliver a speech to a hand-picked group of supporters with the stated goal of drumming up support for the bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and the Build Back Better plan.

And during his nearly hour-long address at the Electric City Trolley Museum, Biden was at once hopeful for the nation’s future, but argued that that future hinges on a massive bolstering of the nation’s infrastructure and its lower and middle classes.

The speech comes at a critical moment for the passage of the two plans.

Negotiations between the White House and Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill are underway on what’s now a scaled-back package but would still be an unprecedented federal effort to expand social services for millions and confront the rising threat of climate change. It’s coupled with a separate $1 trillion bill to update roads and bridges.

One of the planned infrastructure changes is proposed Amtrak service between Scranton and New York City, which Biden claimed would cause millions in economic impact to Northeastern Pennsylvania, pointing to similar plans that he said caused economic boons in cities outside of Boston.

Biden and his Democratic Party have given themselves a deadline to seal agreement after laboring to bridge his once-sweeping $3.5 trillion vision preferred by progressives with a more limited focus that can win over party centrists. He has no Democratic votes to spare for passage in the closely divided Congress, and leaders want agreement by week’s end.

The newly proposed tax provisions, though, are likely to sour progressives and even some moderate Democrats who have long campaigned on undoing the 2017 GOP tax cuts that many believe unduly reward the wealthy, costing the federal government untold sums in lost revenue at a time of gaping income inequality.

Biden argued in Scranton on Wednesday that it was high time to start investing more into the lower and middle classes, moving tax cuts onto them while asking for billionaires to put in “their fair share.”

According to the President, these are simple, common sense values that he learned in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

“I learned that at the kitchen table in Scranton, a place where you take care of one another,” Biden said.

The president, 78, was born at the former St. Mary’s Hospital in Scranton in 1942. He lived in the city until 1953, when his father relocated the family to Delaware to find work.

Biden argued that U.S. history is rooted in dramatic and often expensive investments into future generations, noting that the United States is one of the first countries in the world to offer public education for its children.

“For most of the 20th century, we led the world by a significant margin, because we invested in our people, we invested in ourselves,” he said. “Not only in our roads, our highways and our bridges, but in our people, our families.”

But he said that after years of decreased spending on infrastructure, things have changed.

“Somewhere along the way, we stopped investing in ourselves,” he said, suggesting research has shown that the United States, which once led in terms of quality of its infrastructure and educational programs, now trails behind several nations in Europe.

Administration officials spoke with congressional leaders on the tax alternatives, according to a person familiar with the private talks and granted anonymity to discuss them. The changes may be needed to win over Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Arizona, who had objected to plans to raise the rates on corporations and wealthy individuals earning more than $400,000 a year, said the person and several others.

But it was these proposed tax rates Biden focused much of his time on Wednesday, suggesting that it simply makes sense for people making the most money to pay the most in taxes.

“For too long, the working people of this nation, the backbone of this country, have been dealt out; it’s time to deal them back in,” he said.

But Biden also deflected the suggestion often thrown at him from right-wing commentators of his being a socialist, openly calling himself a “capitalist.” Instead, he suggested these tax breaks for lower-income people is common sense.

“You know, if you are a multi-millionaire or a billionaire, you have a lower tax rate than a family who has a teacher or a firefighter,” he said.

As it stands, the corporate tax rate is 21%, and Democrats want to lift it to 26.5% for companies earning more than $5 million a year. The top individual income tax rate would rise from 37% to 39.6% for those earning more than $400,000, or $450,000 for married couples.

Under the changes being floated that 21% corporate rate would stay the same.

However, the revisions wouldn’t be all positive for big companies and the wealthy. The White House is reviving the idea of a minimum corporate tax rate, similar to the 15% rate Biden had proposed earlier this year. That’s even for companies that say they had no taxable income — a frequent target of Biden who complains that they pay “zero” in taxes.

Local representation

Biden’s appearance on Wednesday was preceded by introductions from Gov. Tom Wolf, Scranton’s Mayor Paige Cognetti, Sen. Bob Casey (D-Scranton) and Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Scranton).

Wolf praised the president, saying he’s done a “really remarkable job,” and said that Pennsylvania will see a great deal of improvements as a result of the passage of the Infrastructure Bill, should it happen.

“When we get this Infrastructure Bill passed, not if, when we get that passed, Pennsylvania is gonna benefit tremendously from it,” he said. “I know there’s a lot of angst, a lot of negotiating that’s going on right now in Washington, D.C., but this is gonna make a big difference for the whole nation, but it’s especially gonna be important for Pennsylvania. It deserves to be a priority.”

Cognetti agreed, saying the infrastructure plan has Scranton’s fingerprints all over it.

“What makes us so proud, though, is that the President’s upbringing in Scranton shines through in his agenda,” she said. “The need to repair our aging infrastructure, the need to lead on public transportation.”

In a speech made with preserved antique trolley cars as a backdrop, Biden recalled riding the Scranton Transit Co. trolleys downtown from his family’s home in the city’s Green Ridge section. In addition to local rail transit service, Scranton at that time also was served by passenger trains connecting the city with the rest of what was then a sprawling network of railroads spanning the nation. The city’s last trolley ran in 1954, and its last passenger train departed in 1970.

“We were just looking at the trolleys and thinking about what it was like to ride the trolley,” Cognetti went on. “We don’t have that anymore,” she said, adding there is a “need for us to rehabilitate, reestablish our Amtrak line from Scranton to New York, not because it’s something fun to talk about, but because it’s central to our economy here and the economic future of the entire region.”

Luzerne County representation

There was Luzerne County representation at Biden’s appearance as well, with state Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, D-Wilkes-Barre, and Mayor George Brown also in attendance.

Brown told a reporter afterward that he believes Biden’s large bills will be immensely helpful to the Diamond City as well.

“What it means is that people will be able to go back to work,” he said, focusing on the bills’ childcare elements. “It provides the resources for people, whether that be daycare or other things, that people can go back to the two-income families that they’re used to that they did have before the pandemic.

“It also brings back a lot of other economics that the President spoke about today,” he went on. “Now it seems like the rich … are not being taxed appropriately, but people like us are being taxed. Sort of some equity now is going to be taking place, when there’s inequity today. And a lot of the money coming back from that equity will be going to help the people who need it most.”

Pashinski likewise praised his fellow Democrat’s plans, praising Biden for “showing that he’s a regular guy who’s going to always fight for the working people of this country.”

“He delivered a sincere, heartfelt speech reflecting his childhood in Scranton,” Pashinski said.

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Staff writer Bill O’Boyle and the Associated Press contributed to this report.