Biden-Harris Smothered Trump’s Post-Pandemic Recovery
– By Howard Sierer –
In her debate with Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris claimed, “Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression.” President Biden made a similar claim in his earlier debate with Trump: “Look at what . . . Trump left me… [an economy] in free fall.”
Both were hoping that voters would remember only the economic disruption caused by the COVID pandemic and not the fact that when they took office, the economy had recovered almost completely and far faster than forecast and all economic indicators were pointing upward.
By the first quarter of 2021 when Biden and Harris took office, the country’s gross domestic product had surpassed pre-COVID levels. Responding to this high-growth situation, the S&P 500 was over 10% higher than its pre-COVID peak.
In Trump’s robust pre-Covid economy, unemployment had reached the lowest levels in 50 years. Blacks, Hispanics, women and low-wage workers saw some of the strongest job gains and wage growth.
Unemployment climbed to a brief peak of 14% during the COVID pandemic but had dropped to 6.4% by the time Biden and Harris took office. Compare that figure with unemployment that was above 8% for nearly all of Pres. Obama’s first term, and didn’t drop to 6.4% until he’d been in office more than five years. Yet Obama and Biden didn’t bemoan the high unemployment rate when they ran for re-election in 2012.
Unwilling to give Trump credit for the economy’s rapid recovery from the pandemic and despite the fact that the economy had been growing robustly since June 2020, Biden, Harris, and the Democratic Congress enacted the completely unneeded and inappropriately named “American Rescue Act” in March 2021. The bill passed on straight party lines: no Republican voted for it.
Pouring gasoline on the already-burning economy, Democrats dumped money willy-nilly on almost everyone that spring, regardless of their financial circumstances. The bill included an overlay of unemployment benefits that resulted in combined state/federal benefits for many that were more than they could earn going back to work. Unsurprisingly many stayed home.
The inevitable resulting inflation that peaked at 9.1% has distorted the economy for the last 3½ years. Add to that, Biden-Harris’ repeated attempts to regulate everything they could: the Internet, drug prices, stock markets and more. The most disruptive of all: Biden-Harris climate policy that has dumped our tax dollars on favored “green” technologies and companies while penalizing others. Most egregious of all, they are attempting to force us all to buy electric cars, like it or not. And most of us don’t.
Our economy has moved forward juiced by the 2017 Trump tax cuts and grossly excessive, ongoing climate spending in the hilariously-named Inflation Reduction Act,. That short-sighted progress comes with the prospect of flying off the edge of the national bankruptcy cliff in the not-too-distant future. Biden-Harris have been running up trillion dollar deficits year after year, $1.8 trillion this last fiscal year. Anything that can’t go on forever…won’t.
This reckless and mindless spending calls to mind lines from Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.” Question: “How did you go bankrupt?” Answer: “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” On Harris’ spending path, gradual then sudden bankruptcy is unavoidable.
The Trump tax cuts end in 2025, promising more federal revenue. But their end will not come close to eliminating the annual budget deficits built in as a result of Democrats’ spending of the last several years.
Biden and Harris have delivered economic madness on a scale unimaginable even a few years ago. It’s been possible only because as the world’s leading economy, we can print our own money as needed. That will end and end badly. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
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