Trump, Biden banking on job recovery plans to win election bid

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Which candidate can deliver on promise to bring back jobs?

Steve Moore and Austan Goolsbee debate whether Trump or Biden is better equipped to lead economic recovery

It's all about the economy.

As the United States hits the home stretch toward Election Day, the biggest hot-button issue among voters is jobs and the economy. Both President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden have put their recovery plans at the forefront of their respective campaigns. Both candidates say that they know what is needed to bring back jobs.

"We've created more jobs than this country has ever created," President Trump said at his recent town hall with NBC News. "We're up 160 million jobs."

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Biden has often touted the Obama administration's efforts to create job growth and dig out of the hole created by the Great Recession.

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden points toward President Trump during the second and final presidential debate Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020, at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, Pool)

"Look, we inherited the worst recession short of a depression in American history," Biden said during the first presidential debate in Cleveland earlier this month. "I was asked to bring it back. We were able to have an economic recovery that created the jobs you're talking about."

Both candidates have also attacked the other's record when it comes to job creation.

"We handed him a booming economy, and he blew it," Biden said during a testy exchange during the same debate.

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"I got it done and you know what happened? Our economy boomed like it's never boomed before." Trump replied.

Both the Trump and the Obama-Biden administrations did see job growth, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

During their final three years in office, Obama and Biden saw the nation add 8 million jobs, an increase of 5.9 percent, while Trump added 6.5 million, lowering the unemployment rate by 4.5%.

Both candidates agree on one thing, economic recovery is needed, and they have each laid out their plans to get to a robust job market.

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Biden has proposed a $700 billion "Buy American" plan in which the federal government would spend $400 billion in purchasing of U.S.-based goods and services and the remaining $300 billion on research and development for new technologies and clean-energy initiatives. The Democratic candidate has said that he is looking to pay for his plans with tax increases or spending cuts.

He has also said that his plan would create 5 million new jobs in manufacturing and innovation and reversing the damage done to the economy by the coronavirus pandemic.

"Manufacturing is the backbone of America," Biden said during a rally last week with automotive workers in Toledo, Ohio. "But we're in a manufacturing recession because of Donald Trump, even before the COVID virus hit."

Trump says his plan will create 10 million jobs over the next 10 months. He is proposing to provide incentives for companies to bring back jobs to the U.S. by with tax credits and imposing tariffs on companies that produce jobs overseas. Trump has also floated the idea of both capital gains and middle-income tax cuts, claiming that his opponent will do the opposite if elected into office.

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"This election is a choice between a Trump super recovery, which we are in right now, or a Biden depression," the president said during a campaign rally earlier this month in Nevada. "You will have a depression, first of all, your taxes will be quadrupled, you will have a depression the likes of which we have not seen since 1929."