What’s Not to Like About ‘Bidenomics’? Plenty

President Joe Biden speaks about the economy at the Old Post Office in Chicago, Ill., on June 28, 2023. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

Commentary

The Biden camp seems to be operating under the delusion that it can somehow rehabilitate the phrase “Bidenomics”—hurled as a pejorative at the White House by those of us on the Right—to serve as a buzz phrase in support of the president’s 2024 reelection campaign.

It’s a risky—some would say, foolish—notion, but certainly not the first political misstep from this administration.

This is, after all, the same administration that told us that the inflation we saw in its early months was “transitory,” even as headline inflation tripped the 5 percent mark in May 2021. Then, in June of that year, TC Energy, the developer of the Keystone XL Pipeline, further exacerbated inflation when it announced it had abandoned the pipeline project, even as Republicans urged the company to continue. The decision was impelled by the Biden team cutting off the permits for the project the day after taking the president took his oath of office. Gasoline that had been $2.25 per gallon in January 2021 spiked to $3/gal by the end of May 2021, then rocketed to $5/gal by June 2022.

In November 2021, Biden again exacerbated inflation by spending $1.2 trillion on its bipartisan Infrastructure and Jobs Act, which passed the House with just 13 Republican votes. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill would add some $415 billion in additional spending and increase the nation’s debt by some $256 billion. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan budget analysis group, puts that debt increase figure at $398 billion.

‘Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste’

Former president Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emmanuel, called crises “a chance to do something you could not do before” the crisis. So, using the financial crisis of 2008–09, the Obama administration passed the largely wasted and ineffective so-called Recovery Act of 2009.

Similarly, the Biden White House used the pandemic, which was waning by the time he took office in 2021, as the “crisis” to pass a $2 trillion giveaway package. The America Rescue Plan, passed Congress along hard party lines and gave tens of billions of dollars to states, municipalities, and not-for-profits to spend on nebulous projects and transfer payments, just as Obama had, with little accountability.

Few of the American Rescue Plan projects were related to the pandemic. One project, for example, rescued a horribly mismanaged multi-employer union pension plan that had been underfunded for years before the pandemic. It appeared little more than a quid pro quo payment for the continued political support of the affected unions. Just last month, for example, Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) announced a similar $860 million bail-out of a grossly underfunded steel workers’ pension fund. Again, the underfunded pension was attributable to bad pension fund management; it had nothing to do with pandemic. Elsewhere, according to the New York Post, municipalities used the purported COVID stimulus to build pickleball courts and to refurbish school weight rooms and add astroturf to school playing fields.

Make no mistake: All this cash sloshing around the economy from Biden’s additional spending fueled inflation, the cruel tax on Americans, particularly those on fixed incomes.

Ultimately, the spending endemic in Bidenomics caused inflation that, in turn, caused the Federal Reserve to raise the federal funds rate at the most rapid pace in 40 years. Those increases, in turn, caused several banks to realize losses on bonds with lower rates held for sale, and forced some, like Silicon Valley Bank, to become insolvent. The banking crisis, in turn, caused the Fed to add even more cash to the economy, reigniting more inflation and tightening credit.

Biden’s Jobs ‘Creation’ Sophistry

Perhaps the most offensive element of the Biden administration’s “Bidenomics” canard, because it assumes Americans are stupid, is its disingenuous sophistry that equates the post–pandemic jobs recovery with holistic jobs “creation.” The House Budget Committee obliterated the White House narrative early last month, showing, among other things, how the trend of jobs creation, pre-pandemic, exceeded the jobs creation trend after the pandemic. The labor participation rate is also a full percentage point lower than it was before the pandemic.

We also remember how employers complained how hard it was to hire employees owing to the fact that the various Biden stimulus plans and transfer payments essentially paid for Americans to “stay on the couch.” To get them back to work instead of accepting government money—and sitting on the couch—employers had to pay higher wages that added another element of our inflation.

Summary

“Bidenomics” has been a disaster for the United States, causing inflation, bank failures, and a decline in real U.S. living standards. It should come as no surprise that when Americans were surveyed in an Associated Press poll, 64 percent of them disapprove the way President Biden is handling the economy.

Team Biden touting its Bidenomics record going into the 2024 election may be the worst political gaffe since Gerald Ford said, in 1976, that “Eastern Europe was not dominated by the Soviet Union,” even as the Soviets had three tank divisions occupying Poland. Touting Bidenomics as a “success” conveys that the president and his administration are sorely and haplessly 0ut of touch with the nation’s economy.

Sould the Biden administration foolishly continue to tout Bidenomics into 2024, the Republican nominee should merely respond with the iconic question Ronald Reagan framed against Jimmy Carter in 1980, and that we should ask of ourselves whenever an incumbent president is up for reelection: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”

For Bidenomics, the answer should be a resounding, “No!”

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.