Biden Visits Kankakee, Chicago To Push For Support For Farmers

CHICAGO — President Joe Biden spent the day on Wednesday in Illinois, including at a family farm in Kankakee, where he placed a spotlight on the importance of local farmers amid rising food costs due to the war in Ukraine.

Biden arrived at O’Hare International Wednesday morning and then traveled to a family-owned 800-acre farm in Kankakee for a speech at 12:45 p.m.

After touring the farm, Biden made a short speech, addressing the need for locally sourced products after the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused the cost of food and other goods to skyrocket.

"Right now, America is fighting on two fronts: at home, as inflation and rising prices, and abroad, as helping Ukrainians defending democracy and feeding those who are left hungry around the world because Russian atrocities exist,” Biden told reporters in the speech Wednesday morning. “The American farmers understand the war has cut off critical sources of food.”

Despite the release of a government report on Wednesday that indicated that the inflation rate has slowed slightly from earlier this year, Biden said that it is critical that locally owned farms like the one he visited before heading to Chicago Wednesday afternoon have what they need to survive.

“We have to keep investing in our farmers to reduce costs and ditch prices for consumers,” Biden said in the speech. “We have the most productive, most efficient farmers in the world here in the United States.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday that the President planned to speak about how supporting American farmers allows the U.S. to do its part as the war in Ukraine has disrupted the supply chain and caused the price of food and other goods to soar in recent months.

“Just as we are providing weapons, we are going to work on doing what we can to support farmers to provide more wheat and other food around the world,” Psaki told reporters.

From Kankakee, Biden traveled to Chicago for a speech at McCormick Place to address the 40th International Brotherhood of Electric Workers convention before he appears at a fundraiser for the Democratic National Convention downtown.

In nearly a 40-minute speech to union workers Wednesday afternoon, Biden touted his pro-labor strategy make life better for middle-class Americans. Repeating an often-used mantra that emphasized the importance of the middle class in stabilizing and improving the economy, Biden talked about the dignity of union jobs across the country and pledged to continue working to provide better wages, job protections, and better benefits for union workers like the ones assembled at McCormick Place.

Biden said that he is in the White House because union workers "brought him to the dance" and promised to remain the most pro-labor, union President in the nation's history.

"You allow workers to maintain their dignity," Biden said Wednesday. "You allow them to hold their heads up high. It's about a lot more of what you do in terms of their paychecks and their benefits. It's about their dignity."

Biden spoke of Republican plans to make middle-class Americans pay higher taxes while the wealthy paid less on their incomes than police officers, teachers and electricians. He touted plans to improve the lives of the middle class, including union workers, without whom, Biden said, the world shut down if they ever went on strike.

"Wall Street didn't build this country, the middle class did," Biden said, "and unions built the middle class."

Biden said that he inherited an economy on the brink of a Great Depression, but said he has changed that by creating 8.3 million jobs since taking over the White House 15 months ago. He touted an unemployment rate that stands at 3.6 percent nationally, which represents the fastest decline in the jobless rate over the first year of any presidency in 20 years, Biden said.

He said jobs are returning to the United States and that his presidency is making "Buy America" not just a slogan, but a reality, Biden said.

"Our economy has gone from being on the mend to being on the move," Biden said.

Biden, who traveled to suburban Elk Grove Village last fall, was scheduled to return to Washington on Wednesday evening after appearing at the DNC fundraiser.