Biden’s Economic Record
By Yesterday Joe Biden gave a speech at the Brookings Institution about what he’s done for the US economy and warned Donald Trump not to screw it up. Heather Cox Richardson reports.
The president noted that Trump is inheriting a strong economy. Biden shifted the U.S. economy from 40 years of supply-side economics that had transferred about $50 trillion from the bottom 90% to the top 1% and hollowed out the middle class.
By investing in the American people, the Biden team expanded the economy from “the middle out and the bottom up,” as Biden says, and created an economy that he rightfully called “the envy of the world.” Biden listed the numbers: more than 16 million new jobs, the most in any four-year presidential term in U.S. history; low unemployment; a record 20 million applications for the establishment of new businesses; the stock market hitting record highs.
Biden called out that in the two years since Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, the private sector has jumped on the public investments to invest more than a trillion dollars in clean energy and advanced manufacturing.
Disruptions from the pandemic—especially the snarling of supply chains—and Russian president Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine created a global spike in inflation; the administration brought those rates back to around the Fed’s target of 2%.
Biden pointed out that “[l]ike most…[great] economic developments, this one is neither red nor blue, and America’s progress is everyone’s progress.”
But this is nowhere to be seen in major news coverage.
This illustrates the difficulty for Democrats of getting the message out. It would be good if members of Congress would repeat it, but when a major speech by a president, warning his successor, isn’t reported, we’re starting from behind. That’s why some new thinking is needed, but it’s also one more reason why the circular firing squad misses this point and many others. Could be a great headline, too: “President Warns His Successor Not To Screw Up.”