Joe Biden blasts Donald Trump on jobs report, says Florida budget will suffer

Vice President Joe Biden said historic unemployment shows the failures of Donald Trump’s corporate-friendly economy. His campaign said Florida’s economic challenges in the COVID-19 pandemic shine a harsh spotlight on that fact.

“Trump loves to crow about the great economy he built,” Biden said in an address on NowThis. “But when the crisis hit, it became clear who the economy was built to serve.”

The address was timed to spotlight a jobs report released Friday, the first to reflect the full brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic reaching U.S. shores. That showed unemployment rising to 14.7% nationwide, the highest number since 1939 at the end of the Great Depression. That came as 20.5 million jobs disappeared in the worst monthly loss on record.

The Biden campaign also pointed to consequences for state governments, including an expected $8 billion shortfall in Florida. A Florida specific release attacked both Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis for exacerbating the economic crisis by ignoring the advice of public health officials.

A fact sheet distributed to Florida press said those losses spread evenly across the budget would be devastation for Floridians.

Consequences, according to the campaign, would include a $1.54 billion hit to K-12 education. And that’s with per-pupil spending still lagging pre-2008 levels. To accommodate for the loss, DeSantis would need to cut per pupil spending by $538 or teacher salaries by $8,603.

The Democratic figures serve as a clear attack on what DeSantis hoped to be a signature achievement of the 2020 Legislative Session, namely a hike in teacher pay.

The fiscal consequences could be accompanied with a $1.65 billion cut to Medicaid. That’s a particular sore point to Barack Obama’s former vice president as Florida has long resisted an expansion in Medicaid since passage of the Affordable Care Act.

Perhaps most striking amid the pandemic, across-the-board cuts would mean a $600 million hit to the Department of Health budget, threatening opioid programs as resources go to tracking COVID-19.

Meanwhile, major metropolitan areas like Miami-Dade are seeing threats to local revenues, which could mean cuts to funding for first responders on the front lines of the public health crisis.

“This pandemic has laid bare just how much damage has trump has done in just three years,” said Biden.

The presumptive Democratic nominee accused Trump of leading a “corrupt recovery” funding major donors and encouraging them to buy back stock instead of helping workers.

Biden said his administration will focus on regular Americans instead of corporations bailed out twice in 12 years.

“Donald Trump has spent three years tilting the playing field toward the wealthy and not the middle class,” Biden said.