By Steve Holland
GOLDEN, Colo. (Reuters) – President Joe Biden on Tuesday made Colorado the latest backdrop featuring nagging drought conditions and raging wildfires in the U.S. West to build support for infrastructure spending plans aimed at fighting the growing threat of climate change.
Biden began the day in California, and Colorado was his third and last stop on a two-day Western swing in which he also visited Idaho to show how global warming has scorched the region’s landscape even as the eastern states battle hurricanes and other storms that have caused flash floods and killed dozens.
“These fires are blinking code red for our nation,” Biden said in Sacramento, California on Monday.
Biden hopes to tap into voter concerns about the climate to gain populist support for a a $3.5 trillion spending plan that is being negotiated in the U.S. Congress.
Republicans are adamantly opposed to the legislation because it would raise taxes on the wealthy. Democrats who hold narrow majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate are hoping to pass spending plan with only Democratic votes, a difficult balancing act in chambers rife with competing Interests.
Biden was to have a tour of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden prior to remarks in which the White House said he would stress how his spending plan will “help tackle the climate crisis, modernize our infrastructure and strengthen our country’s resilience while creating good paying union jobs and advancing environmental justice.”
(Reporting by Steve Holland in Golden, Colorado; Editing by David Gregorio)
