Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Greensboro Monday to promote the administration’s $2 trillion plan to create new jobs for improving the country’s aging infrastructure.
Speaking at Guilford Technical Community College, Harris spoke of the administration’s goal of creating “good jobs” through the passage of the American Jobs Plan, which would provide new funding for transportation, clean energy, at-home care, and homebuilding projects, among other things.
Harris called the proposal a “once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-generation investment” in the country’s infrastructure as well as the “the largest investment in job creation since World War II.”
“We are going to take a giant leap into the future, and that is what the American Jobs Plan is all about,” she said.
The plan seeks to keep the country competitive, strengthen communities and create jobs, she said.
“And it’s not only about jobs,” she added. “It’s about good jobs.”
“Good jobs,” she explained, are opportunities that offer a safe workplace environment and provide a livable wage to raise a family.
“I believe you shouldn’t have to work more than one job to pay your bills and feed your family,” she said. “One good job should be enough.”
Some jobs created under the administration’s proposal would build on skills that people already have—“skills of pipe fitters, and electricians, and welders. Construction workers, and factory workers, and transit workers. And care workers, too,” she said.
Others would require additional education, but not necessarily a costly four-year college degree.
“The truth is that almost every job that will be a good job will require some amount of education after high school,” she said. “For some, that’s a training program, or an apprenticeship to get the certificate they need to get the job they want. For some, that’s a technical college.”
To ensure people have the skills for the jobs, Harris said the administration plans to invest in workforce development and create as many as two million apprenticeships.
“There isn’t only one path to success,” she said.
Replacing all of the country’s lead-laden water pipelines with safer alternatives and expanding broadband Internet access to rural areas are among the administration’s top infrastructure plans, she said.
Also Monday, Harris was scheduled to visit Thomas Built Buses in High Point, which produces electric buses to combat climate change.
Follow Managing Editor Geoff West on Twitter or send an email to gwest@indyweek.com.
Support independent local journalism. Join the INDY Press Club to help us keep fearless watchdog reporting and essential arts and culture coverage viable in the Triangle.
