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[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Joseph Klein’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
President Biden has been bragging about what he claims are his administration’s historic economic achievements. “Bidenomics is working,” the president declared in remarks he delivered in Chicago on June 28, 2023. He claimed that “the pay for low-wage workers has grown at the fastest pace in two decades. And, folks, it’s no accident. It’s Bidenomics in action.”
The president is right that we have seen Bidenomics in action for the last two and a half years. The problem is that more Bidenomics in action has meant more economic misery for the American people.
President Biden added that he believed Bidenomics is “going to help lessen the division in this country by bringing us back together.” To the contrary, the country is more divided than ever.
President Biden and his cheerleaders live in a sheltered echo chamber. The American people do not share their Pollyanna view of the economy. Bidenomics is not working for average Americans, who are struggling to make ends meet. The poverty rate has increased on President Biden’s watch while the middle class is getting squeezed.
The president is trying to sell the American people a bill of goods in promoting his dismal economic record. He is not the fantastic job creator that he claims to be, for example. President Biden shamelessly takes credit for creating many millions of jobs that he had nothing to do with. These jobs were simply restored when businesses reopened after the nation’s lengthy shutdown ended, and the workforce returned to its pre-pandemic level.
President Biden’s misleading claim that he has reduced the budget deficit by a record amount of $1.7 trillion due to his policies earned him a Bottomless Pinocchio from the Washington Post. In fact, Biden and the Democrat-controlled Congress in 2021 and 2022 added trillions of dollars more to the national debt with their runaway deficit spending. No wonder Fitch downgraded the United States’ credit rating on August 1st.
In a recently released CNN poll, just 37% of Americans surveyed approved of President Biden’s handling of the economy. Even less – 30% – approve of the way that the Bidenomics-in-chief is handling inflation. A recent CBS News poll shows comparable results. But President Biden prattles on with self-congratulations.
“Inflation is less than half of what it was a year ago,” President Biden declared in his Chicago speech this past June, presumably referring to the year-to-year increase in the Consumer Price Index. True enough, but the year-to-year increase in the rate of inflation from June 2021 to June 2022 was a four-decade high of 9.1%!
“Annual inflation has fallen by around two thirds since last summer,” the president boasted following the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index report for July 2023. He neglected to mention that the year-to-year increase in the rate of inflation from July 2021 to July 2022 was a whopping 8.5%.
President Biden’s attempt to make the current year-to-year price increase numbers look good is pathetic, considering that they are measured from price levels in 2022 that were already extraordinarily elevated from the comparable months in 2021. It is like celebrating that a person’s fever went up one degree today from 104 to 105 degrees Fahrenheit as compared to yesterday’s rise of three full degrees from 101 the day before yesterday to 104 degrees. The fever is still going up and the poor individual is still very sick.
Due in large part to the reckless spending bills passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress and signed into law by President Biden during his first two years in office, prices are nearly 16% higher than when he became president. The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index report for July 2023 shows that prices are still rising month-to-month.
The national average retail price of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. has come down from its historic high of over $5 in June 2022, but it is nevertheless more than 60% higher than the day that President Biden took office. And after some transitory dips, the average retail price of gasoline in the U.S. is on the rise again.
This year the average retail price of a gallon of gasoline has risen from a low of $3.331 on January 2, 2023 to $3.828 as of August 10, 2023 – a 14.9% increase year to date.
Since President Biden took office, food prices have risen more than 18%. Just in the last year alone as of July 2023, food prices have risen about 5%.
Since President Biden took office, the cost of rent of primary residence has risen about 16%. Just in the last year alone as of July 2023, the cost of rent of primary residence increased by 8%.
Mortgage interest rates have gone through the roof. As of August 10, 2023, the national average 30-year fixed mortgage interest rate was 7.42%. The national average 30-year fixed mortgage interest rate on the day that Joe Biden became president was 2.84%.
Meanwhile, real weekly earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees have declined about 3.5% since January 2021. These earnings certainly have not kept up with the increases in the prices they are paying for basic necessities.
As a result, according to CNBC, which cited a LendingClub report, “as of June, 61% of adults still say they are living paycheck to paycheck.” The hardest hit individuals are those whose day-to-day lives President Biden claims he has improved – lower-income workers. “Roughly three-quarters of consumers earning less than $50,000 annually and 65% of those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 were living paycheck to paycheck in June, based on LendingClub’s numbers.”
President Biden has a strange idea of what constitutes an improving day-to-day life for the average American.
Even Vice President Kamala Harris, in one of her rare clear-thinking statements, conceded during her remarks at a campaign reception last month that “the average American is a $400 unexpected expense away from bankruptcy.”
Not exactly a great record of economic achievement to run on after more than two years of Bidenomics. It is far more like a record to run away from as fast as one can.
Biden’s policies of tax, spend, and regulate = gimmee da monee.
Does Bidenomics include getting millions of dollars in bribes from China when corrupt Joe was VP?
BTW, what did Obama know and when did he know it regarding his VP taking bribes from hostile countries?
Joe bragged that Ukraine would not get $1 billion in US loan guarantees unless the prosecutor looking into Burisma that paid Hunter $83,000 a month was fired. Joe said if you don’t believe me call the White House. Has Obama been asked under oath about getting a phone call from Ukraine regarding his VP holding up the $1 billion unless the prosecutor was fired?
If Democrats led by Obama can steal the US Presidential Election in 2020 from the real winner, Donald J Trump, and get away with it, then Democrats can do anything and lie about anything as long as it enriches them, hurts ordinary Americans, and “fundamentally transforms” (destroys) America.
Bidenomics is a boon to the globalist communist destruction of the
United States. As is all the rest festering under the Biden regime:
destruction of great American cities through rampant homelessness
and the omni-present Fetanyl and Tranq – soaring crime everywhere
without penalty – illegal migrants sprawled all over the streets with
no where to go in all this mess.
As the prols carry on crushed under by Bidenomics – while waiting for
the destruction to spread like cancer into their communities as well –
and as they await the next boast from demented Dear Leader that
his dismal economic policies are working to their advantage.
What an arrogant, lying crud. Which is so obvious when even a
lefty rag like the Washington Post gives Biden a ‘bottomless
Pinocchio’.
Regular gas is $4.00/gallon where I live, and the price of groceries rises weekly. That’s all the Bidenomics I need to know.
“As democracy is perfected, the office of the president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
_____H. L. Mencken
While traveling by car during one of his many overseas travels, Professor Milton Friedman spotted scores of road builders moving earth with shovels instead of modern machinery. When he asked why powerful equipment wasn’t used instead of so many laborers, his host told him it was to keep employment high in the construction industry. If they used tractors or modern road building equipment, fewer people would have jobs was his host’s logic.
“Then instead of shovels, why don’t you give them spoons and create even more jobs?” Friedman inquired.
It’s easy to create jobs. Biden when he pours tax money or borrowed money into solar and wind boondoggles creates jobs. The problem is that the money that people are payed for these jobs inflates and then all the other employers in the country have less to pay people to work for them. In other words they can’t hire people on what used to be a decent salary. So Biden as he creates jobs destroys other jobs and inflates the currency.