AMAC Exclusive – By Shane Harris
Ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union Address Tuesday night, the White House released a fact sheet declaring that “the Biden economic plan is working” and “the state of the economy is strong” – claims that were quickly echoed by the mainstream media to lay the groundwork for Biden’s speech. But this narrative defies the reality that millions of families are experiencing and further underscores just how oblivious Democrats are to the financial suffering their policies have inflicted on the American people.
Public polling data highlights a glaring disconnect between Democrat rhetoric and Americans’ actual feelings about the state of the economy. According to a CBS News poll released this week, 61% of Americans rate the economy as “bad” under Biden. 38% expect the economy to be “in a recession” at some point in the next year, while 24% expect it to be “slowing” and just 20% say “booming/growing.” Many Wall Street investors are similarly forecasting a recession in 2023. Small business optimism remains low, as does consumer confidence.
Democrats have largely pointed to low unemployment and strong job creation numbers to justify their dubious claims of economic revival. And indeed, on its own that data seems to suggest the economy is thriving. At 3.4%, unemployment is the lowest it has been in 50 years. The January jobs report, released last Friday, showed that the economy added more than double the number of expected jobs last month, continuing a trend of strong jobs reports from the second half of 2022.
But Biden and his allies have been intentionally misleading about what these few apparently positive topline numbers represent, even as they downplay or outright ignore the plentiful evidence painting a far less rosy picture of the country’s economic condition.
While the administration smugly trumpets the total number of jobs created throughout the first two years of Biden’s presidency, they conveniently fail to mention that Biden took office in the midst of an ongoing economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic that began under President Trump. As data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows, Biden inherited a strong “V-shaped” jobs recovery from Trump, which then leveled off sharply once Biden’s economic policies took effect.
As economist E.J. Antoni pointed out in an op-ed for Fox News in December, technicalities in how BLS measures the number of employed people and jobs filled also allow for double counting, artificially inflating the number of jobs created. For example, someone who is forced to take a second or third part-time job to put food on the table would be counted as two or three “jobs created.”
Even the low unemployment figure is not what it at first seems. Thanks to a slew of Democrat policies incentivizing people not to return to work, labor force participation remains weak, and has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels. In other words, while unemployment is low, so is the total number of people employed, which in turn, according to Antoni, “artificially depresses the unemployment rate so that even though the number of people employed declined in the household survey, the unemployment rate remained unchanged.”
Given this context, a more accurate interpretation of the entirety of the jobs report and unemployment data – not just the headline numbers – is that Biden slowed rather than accelerated the recovery that began under Trump, and has in fact driven the country into a state of economic malaise.
Biden has also downplayed or ignored the disastrous effects of inflation, which skyrocketed to over 9% last year and continues to sit above 6%. The president notably dismissed inflation as a “global problem” during his State of the Union, making very little mention of an issue that has consistently ranked as a top concern for voters for well over a year. During a press conference touting the January jobs numbers last Friday, Biden angrily lashed out at a reporter for even asking about inflation, saying “Do I take any blame for inflation? No. Because it was already there when I got here, man.”
Official data shows, however, that Biden’s claim is false. As Reuters reported following the exchange, “inflation statistics did not spike until [Biden’s] presidency had already begun… the consumer price index rose 6.5% in 2022, compared to an annual rate around 1.4% when Biden took office.”
Higher inflation combined with relatively slow wage growth has also meant that real wages, or wages adjusted for inflation, have seen a continual slide for more than a year. In total, real average weekly earnings decreased more than 3% from December 2021 to December 2022 – a significant blow to working families already struggling to make ends meet.
Furthermore, even if some economic measures aren’t “as bad” right now as they were six months or a year ago, Biden still can’t erase or reverse the permanent harm his policies have had on Americans’ finances.
For instance, though Biden has touted the recent decline in gas prices, prices still remain nearly a dollar higher per gallon than when he took office, and are expected to remain the same or increase in the months ahead. Consumers will also never get back the hundreds or thousands of dollars more that they were forced to fork over when Biden’s policies sent gas soaring above $5 per gallon.
The economy also entered a recession last year, and many economists believe the country is headed for an even deeper recession in the months ahead or may already be in one now. As if that weren’t enough, a bear market in 2022 wiped out the modest gains the stock market saw in 2021, jeopardizing retirement plans for many older Americans and threatening the financial future of millions more.
This damage cannot be undone. Yet despite a clear record of failure, the administration bizarrely seems to expect praise and gratitude. Over the next few weeks, Biden and his cabinet are expected to launch a post-State of the Union “blitz” to promote their supposed economic successes and call for more big-spending policies that Biden outlined in his speech Tuesday night.
But unless that rhetoric is accompanied by news of substantive policy changes, few people will be willing to buy it.
Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on Twitter @Shane_Harris_.
When these counters of unemployed persons perform their job are they also including the 3+ million illegals which have crossed our boarder? Are they ignoring them because they are not citizens of this republic?
Tell me these newly employed are not just the Covid workers told to go home because the restaurants were forced to close and are now going back to work? I am still unemployed and nobody came around to my door to count me!!!
The SOTU and the Media’s coverage leading up to the event and then all subsequent activites have all played out exactly as anticipated. This was chiefly a well choreographed propaganda event for the Democrats to begin the 2024 election cycle. His handlers juiced up Biden with the maximum doses of the meds necessary for him to be able to perform for the 70 minutes his speech would last and then the MSM took over to echo how terrific Biden was for getting through that time frame. Therefore truth did not matter and was not the prime focus of either the SOTU message or the MSM’s coverage of it. It was a framing of how the Democrats will position themselves going into 2024.
Everything the Democrats do between now and our so-called election day in 2024 is focused on the percentage of the American population that is neither well informed, capable of any form of critical thinking or analysis nor particularly interested in doing any actual research themselves on the issues or candidates. In short, the Democrats are laser focused on the rather large segment of the American population that is lazy, apathetic and unmotivated. The segment of the country that is incredibly easy to persuade. The Democrats do NOT care what the rest of the country thinks, as they fully control the voting process of 5 of the 6 critical electorial states.
For those of you that are true students of history around the world, we are very near or at the actual stage where elections no longer matter. Where elections are merely staged events with known and controlled outcomes, because the process has been so corrupted as to ensure the desired individuals and party win. It is usually at this point in a country’s transformation, where the leader and his party are free to make ridiculously outlandish statements and outright lies with no consequences or blowback. Much in the exact same way Biden did the other night and the Party’s propaganda arm, the MSM, all praise the message and leader’s performance. At this stage of a country’s decline, it doesn’t matter whether the population “buys” it anymore, as the author suggests, because at this stage the people have completely lost control of the government.
Reality is too horrific
And yet people are still electing democrats (see Pennsylvania) who are, at best complicit, if not specifically engaged in destroying the economy and the nation.
Democrats consistently continue to think that they are entitled to their own set of facts and just because they want it to be true that it is!!! But reality has a way of presenting itself that is indisputable!! I often wonder whether Democrats have any notion of what an economy is and how to make it better for all BUT that would mean that they would have to want to make things better for all and not just Democrat politicians!!! Then we come to the seeming ‘fact’ that they don’t want everyone to succeed, therefore, making our country very successful but, NO, they are selfish, arrogant politicians who want it all for themselves!! But a failed country is good for no one, not even Democrat politicians!!
The method with which unemployment is calculated is completely flawed and doesn’t give any kind of accurate number!! Joe claims that HE has created millions of jobs when he knows that is a lie!!! He is using slight-of-hand semantics to bend truths to his own personal facts – unacceptable!!! There have been millions of jobs ‘filled’ but those jobs were only vacant because of Covid and the government mandates to shut down basically the entire economy. Yes, those jobs are and have been filled but that isn’t “creating” jobs – a rhetorical comedy of errors!!!
The Commie fraud puppet traitor Biden’s Economic Plan Is Not “Working”…for America…it is deliberately and with malice, working for the Commie/Globalist traitors! The destruction of our sovereignty, economy, and culture is not due to stupidity nor incompetence, it’s 100% DELIBERATE, all according to plan.
DICTATOR Beijing biden KILLED our economy on 1-21-21, and it continues to get WORSE.
But according to his FANTASY WORLD LIES, the economy is great.
It’s great for him since he’s HIDING in the White House with Fences, Barbwire, and Armed Guards with ASSAULT WEAPONS at TAX PAYERS EXPENSE while the economy continues to SUCK getting WORSE each day he’s Illegally and Unconstitutionally in the White House.
In evaluating the economy the thoughts that come to mind with use of words such as soul and spirit may seem at first to be out of place , and that evaluating the economy has only to do with what is understood by the use of words like data and statistics . However, considering the history of economic development what inspired people to do things to build ships , build airplanes, to make tools and machinery, to design and make anything that is needed has an element of ingenuity involved and thinking about how the product is going to make improvements in how people live. So, the inspiration to make life better has something about it that involves justifiable pride in accomplishment, and the spirit of knowing that something positive is being done, these matters are not measurable through data and statistics, but contribute to the soul and spirit of society. Government policies that respect the goals of people who can best be described as innovators would be the best policies . The foundation of Conservative thinking has to do with the idea of limited government and I believe in that . Business, industry , that needs standards for the development of their products I believe are doing right when working with a government agency that is involved with the setting of standards and things are being done fairly in the interest of safety. It has much to do with the idea of respect, and appreciating the idea that respect is reciprocal. The United States of America will be far better off with a
” Made in the USA ” spirit , dependence on other countries, especially those who are not interested in the principles of liberty and justice , is not sensible. Hopefully , 2024 will bring much needed Conservative leadership into the political picture and the soul and spirit of the country will be respected in all matters , political, economic, Faith , every area of importance .
You wrote a very good article
Shane.
Liberal minded folk are not good at math, which is how Progressive Democrats are able to deceive them. Lowering costs 2 points after having raised costs 5 points is not economic progress, as Biden keeps claiming.
It is working in the minds of brandon’s handlers, weakening the ability of the HARD WORKING LEGAL GUN OWNING TAX PAYING AMERICAN to make ends meet. They will offer “inflation bucks” to offset the HIGH prices of products made in China….