April 6, 2022

Biden's Gaslighting Us on the Economy


KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • In 2021, Democrats dumped a $2 trillion stimulus on a pandemic-shocked, but recovering, economy. Inflation has climbed from 1.7% before their law to 7.9% a year later.
  • Skyrocketing inflation has undermined Americans’ economic optimism: consumer sentiment plunged 30% from March 2021 to March 2022.
  • The president rejects responsibility for persistent, high inflation, while taking credit for the natural course of the post-pandemic economic recovery, and Americans have noticed this disconnect. The share of people who approve of his handling of the economy has plummeted from 54% in February 2021 to 37% a year later.

President Biden intended to use the economic turmoil from the COVID-19 pandemic as a pretext to reshape the American economy. Blinded by this progressive pipe dream, Democrats ignored warnings about inflation to enact a partisan $2 trillion stimulus. Americans are suffering the consequences of this radical agenda, and the president keeps telling an economic story that is disconnected from reality. He wants to take credit for the natural course of post-pandemic recovery and dodge any responsibility for persistent high inflation. But he can’t seem to convince Americans his version is true.

The Real Story of the Biden Economy

The Real Story of the Biden Economy

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic crashed down on a strong U.S. economy. Unemployment climbed from 3.5% in February to 14% in April; Gross Domestic Product plunged an unprecedented 31.4% in the second quarter; and the deficit soared due to $4 trillion in bipartisan emergency relief. In the second half of the year, the economy began to rebound, and consumers’ outlooks improved. This was the economy President Biden inherited – pandemic-shocked, but recovering strongly.

Democrats, not wanting to miss what they saw as an opportunity, pretended the country was still in crisis and jammed through $2 trillion in “COVID relief” in March 2021. They imagined that mammoth law, full of spending on liberal priorities, would be the foundation of their transformative agenda. Instead, their exorbitant progressive policy experiment created skyrocketing inflation like the country had not seen in generations. Inflation climbed from 1.7% last February – before Democrats’ partisan law – to 7.9% a year later.

Inflation has cut into Americans’ paychecks and undermined their economic optimism. The Index of Consumer Sentiment has plunged 30% since March 2021, far below where it was during the earliest, darkest months of the pandemic. A record share of people now say they expect their financial position to get worse over the next year, and more Americans are citing inflation as the country’s most important problem than at any time since 1985.

President Biden is trying to bluff his way out of the situation he created, arguing that he has “put this economy on a strong foundation.” His story has a few glaring problems. The president takes credit for reducing the deficit-to-GDP ratio compared to 2020, without acknowledging the unprecedented, bipartisan COVID relief spending that drove up the deficit that year. The deficit was going to come down naturally, and it would have had a sharper decrease without Democrats’ $2 trillion law. He says he “responsibly and significantly cut back on emergency spending” from 2021 to 2022 with no mention of the inflationary consequences of Democrats’ irresponsible spending last year. The president continues to tout job numbers that have not lived up to his promises. And he tries to blame the effects of the pandemic – and anything else he can think of – for the price hikes hitting families’ budgets.

Americans have noticed this disconnect. The share of people who approve of the president’s handling of the economy has plummeted from 54% in February 2021 to 37% a year later. Americans face the harsh reality of Biden’s inflation crisis every day. They see that their paychecks are not keeping up with rising prices, and they know that the president is just trying to convince them not to believe their lying eyes.

Issue Tags: Taxes, Economy