


President Joe Biden hasn’t learned his lesson, but voters have. Even before today’s ugly new inflation numbers, voters were souring on Biden. Specifically, voters distrust him on economic policy, and they are right.
Inflation — past, present, and future — is the biggest economic concern for regular people. That’s because in the last couple of years, we’ve had the highest inflation in a generation or two, and in the past couple of months, it’s starting to look like our above-normal inflation will persist and even get worse.
Most voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy, and a large plurality say that Biden has hurt the U.S. economy. In recent weeks, these numbers are getting worse for Biden.
Yes, presidents often get blamed for factors mostly outside of their control — gas prices, pandemics, etc. — but in this case, Biden really does deserve blame.
Biden ran for president promising a massive spending spree, supposedly to aid the economy’s recovery from the COVID lockdowns. By the time he took office in late January 2021, though, it was clear that such a massive spending package would do more harm than good. The U.S. economy had basically recovered from the lockdowns, and the trajectory was positive by the time he signed the American Recovery Act.
There was every reason to believe that injecting $1.9 trillion into the economy would drive inflation incredibly high. When you increase the money sloshing around the economy without increasing productivity, you are creating price inflation.
Biden has not admitted the American Recovery Act was an error. He has not accepted blame for high inflation. But it gets worse: He is repeating the same set of mistakes he made four years ago. He is once again running for president by promising all sorts of free money.
Biden keeps forgiving student debt. Forgiving student debt is inflationary, and it enriches the privileged.
Biden is promising to give free money to homeowners every single month.
This, of course, will drive up inflation by pumping more money into the economy without any corresponding increase in productivity.
He’s proposing, in some unclear way, massive child care subsidies. There’s no evidence that this will either increase the workforce or the birthrate, and so that will likely be inflationary, too.
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A note in Biden’s defense: Maybe he believes the American Recovery Act “worked” because it helped him get elected. Maybe he believes his giveaways to college-educated homeowners will also “work,” in that they will help him get reelected.
The current polls, however, suggest otherwise.