AMAC Exclusive
With missiles flying in the Middle East, illegal immigrants streaming across our southern border, inflation rising, and gas prices skyrocketing, the bad news for Joe Biden just keeps on coming. But perhaps no news did more to send chills down the spine of Biden administration officials than the announcement that only 266,000 jobs were created last month, just a quarter of the one million that was expected.
Like the other crises threatening to overwhelm Biden’s presidency, it’s a crisis of his own creation—attributable in significant part to socialist policies such as unemployment bonuses that are paying people not to work.
While the media is eager to distract from the Biden disasters by advancing the narrative of an imaginary world in which Republicans are careening off the cliff and on the verge of inter-party civil war, in fact, the party has rarely been more unified.
As of this week, 22 out of 27 Republican governors have announced that they are rejecting the Biden unemployment bonus policy, as economists and businesses sound the alarm about the dire effects of handing out $300 weekly checks giving people extra money to stay home.
The governors include many of the party’s leading faces, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.
At the state level, the party’s leading figures have quickly aligned their strategies to resist the War on Work being waged by the Biden administration. With Democrats in control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, this unity and coordination at the state level may be Republicans’ most effective means of stopping the federal power grab Washington Democrats are attempting.
While politicians in D.C. ignore the warning signs and take the easy, short-term political “win” of handing out even more borrowed or freshly printed money, the task has fallen to Republican governors to recognize the economic catastrophe these policies are creating around them.
South Carolina Governor McMaster described the problem of the unemployment bonuses clearly. “What was intended to be a short-term financial assistance for the vulnerable and displaced during the height of the pandemic has turned into a dangerous federal entitlement,” he said. He suggested that the Biden policy is “incentivizing and paying workers to stay at home rather than encouraging them to return to the workplace.”
A quick drive by any street with a restaurant or store confirms this fact. Help wanted signs blanket America’s business landscape, with hiring bonuses and hourly pay at more than twice the minimum wage for most entry-level jobs. Businesses have no choice; they are competing with the government’s stay-at-home bonuses.
Unfortunately, the War on Work is not just limited to unemployment bonuses. With the help of Democrats in Congress, Biden’s policies are saddling states with increasingly bloated welfare rolls. For instance, they have banned states from removing able-bodied, working-age adults from welfare programs even if those individuals are no longer eligible—adding further to the disincentive for unemployed workers to get back on the job. In effect, the Biden administration is helping to create a new permanent class of long-term government dependents, unlike anything that existed prior to the pandemic.
The far-left has not let a good crisis go to waste—they’ve used it to transform the face of America’s welfare state.
For the same reason, D.C. Democrats are attacking new election integrity measures being adopted in Republican states. Biden, Bernie, and the rest of the Democrat swamp hopes that with a few more elections like 2020—where voting laws were manipulated, abused, and violated across the nation— Democrats may succeed in turning their millions of new welfare state dependents into Democrat voters.
Let’s hope Republican Governors stay unified and stand in their way.