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Fresh off announcing he’s running for reelection, President Joe Biden provided a glimpse Tuesday into what his campaign’s messaging will likely be in the coming months. 

Speaking at the North America’s Building Trades Unions Legislative Conference in Washington, Biden touted his administration’s achievements while drawing contrast with Republicans fixated on undoing them.  It matched the tenor of his campaign launch video, released Tuesday morning, with Biden even uttering his reelection slogan, “Finish the job,” a half dozen times. 

“Our economic plan is working,” he said. “We now have to finish the job.”

Saying he ran in 2020 to strengthen the middle class, Biden bragged about the U.S. creating 12 million jobs in his first two years.

After the president quoted a series of articles crediting him with boosting domestic manufacturing jobs, those in attendance began to chant, “Four more years!”

Biden attacked Republicans for their long-held position that if the wealthy and corporations aren’t taxed heavily, it will result in job and wage growth trickling down to the middle class. 

“Like many of you, not much trickled down on my dad’s kitchen table,” Biden said. “For decades, trickle-down economics hollowed out the middle class.”

Biden boasted about the major pieces of legislation he’s signed into law, including the American Rescue Plan to help the country recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that has led to 25,000 announced construction projects across the country and the Inflation Reduction Act, which has helped lower health care costs for some Americans and made investments in fighting climate change.

Biden noted that no Republicans voted for the American Rescue Plan or the Inflation Reduction Act. And he said that under former President Donald Trump, “infrastructure week became a punch line. On my watch, infrastructure has become a decade headline.”

The president blasted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy over his speech at the New York Stock Exchange last week in which the California Republican called for cutting discretionary spending to fiscal year 2022 levels and limiting future spending in exchange for GOP lawmakers voting to raise the debt ceiling. If the debt limit is not lifted by summer or early fall, the U.S. would default on its financial obligations.

“Default would be totally irresponsible,” Biden said. “It would mean cutting Social Security, Medicare, higher interest rates for your credit cards, car loans, mortgages,” he said. “The entire economy we put at risk. 

“Folks, America is not a deadbeat nation. We pay our bills,” added Biden, who is demanding Congress raise the debt limit without conditions, as it has under previous presidents.

Biden also defended spending during his administration by repeating that he refuses to tax Americans earning less than $400,000 a year. He also said he has reduced the national deficit by $1.7 trillion, a claim fact checkers have said is misleading.

“We’ve made all this progress while being fiscally responsible,” the president said.

In defense of McCarthy’s proposal, the speaker’s office said in a statement to Spectrum News last week that Biden’s and House Democrats’ “reckless spending and green new deal agenda has produced record inflation and higher prices for American families.”

Biden said he recognizes Americans are still dealing with high inflation but that his policies have helped to slow the rise in prices and lowered some costs for people. He blamed the the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for inflation. 

“We’ve got a lot more work to do” on easing consumer prices, he conceded.