New York Post, August 9, 2023

Joe’s Bidenomics victory tour is a bust on Day One

Joe Biden’s re-election campaign kicks into high gear this week with the president and Cabinet secretaries blanketing the nation to boast about Bidenomics. But CNN reports more than half of Americans believe “the economy is still in a downturn and conditions are continuing to worsen.”

The victory tour started Tuesday in Arizona. But Biden’s slurring, disjointed speech might have reminded viewers of the “authentic frontier gibberish” accolade from the 1974 movie “Blazing Saddles.”

Biden couldn’t decide whether the Grand Canyon was one of the nine wonders of the world or one of the seven wonders of the world. The prez pretended his decrees prohibiting any development of millions of acres would magically create prosperity.

After finishing his sparsely attended speech, Biden opted to attend a fundraiser that night in Albuquerque in lieu of visiting the chaos his policies unleashed at the Arizona-Mexico border.

Bidenomics is a hard sell because consumer prices have increased almost 17% since the president took office, real wages have fallen 4%, and interest rates are at their highest level in 22 years.

Team Biden has no alternative except to “lie louder” — the same tactic that’s insulated it with the media since 2021.

But how can the White House craft bigger howlers?!? In his State of the Union address in January, Biden boasted that thanks to his infrastructure law, “last year, we funded 700,000 major construction projects — 700,000 all across America.” Biden exaggerated by a hundred-fold the number of federally funded projects, and even the White House issued a humiliating correction.

According to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, “Part of our job is storytelling, and we need to make the case about how all of this adds up into a better big picture, too.” In 2021, CNN bashed him for exaggerating by more than 500% the likely number of jobs Biden’s infrastructure plan would create. Buttigieg’s latest stories involve heavily hyped ribbon cuttings for projects that were funded before Biden’s landmark legislation was enacted.

Most of Biden’s economic achievements are shams or mirages. After Friday’s jobs report, Vice President Kamala Harris boasted: “That means, today, 187,000 more Americans are able to go to work, to provide for their family and invest in their future.” A Babylon Bee headline was closer to the truth: “White House Says Bidenomics So Successful The Average American Has Twice As Many Jobs As They Had Two Years Ago.” The number of full-time jobs plummeted by more than half a million last month while part-time jobs surged.

Biden portrays the $50 billion in subsidies for semiconductors via the CHIPS Act as another magic wand for the US economy. But the world semiconductor market is collapsing, with sales down 20% globally this year. Federal subsidies are accompanied by a tangle of social, economic and environmental mandates that guarantee new US factories will be uncompetitive in world markets.

In his Arizona spiel, Biden claimed last year’s Inflation Reduction Act was the “largest climate bill in the history not only of the United States but literally in the history of the world.” But a Washington Post poll released Monday reported that 71% of Americans know “little” or “nothing at all” about that act. Biden is seeking to rebrand the Inflation Reduction Act as a triumph of “environmental justice” after its initial rendition — “Celebrate 87,000 new IRS agents!” — flopped at the box office.

Signs are going up at worksites around the nation: “Project Funded by President Joe Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.” But posting Biden’s name won’t prevent the proliferation of boondoggles across the land.

In 2021, Biden declared that his favorite green-energy company, Proterra, would “end up owning the future.” Proterra’s future ended this week with a bankruptcy filing — the likely fate of many federally subsidized environmental endeavors.

Bidenomics is based on the delusion of endless free federal money. That was the premise of Biden’s half-trillion-dollar student-debt bailout the Supreme Court struck down in June.  House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) declared that Biden’s “$10 trillion in new spending . . . pushed America’s credit rating off the ledge.”  The White House was shocked at the downgrading of US government debt last week and placed all the blame on Republicans.

The White House’s endless victory proclamations on declining inflation have not prevented surging gasoline prices this year despite Biden practically wiping out the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to create an illusion of prosperity. “Rising gas prices” are “a communications nightmare for any White House,” The Washington Post reports, because “local newscasts regularly feature them” and the White House can’t stifle those reports. Could The Washington Post provide a list of all the dismal data the liberal media helped Biden bury?

Bidenomics propaganda is also struggling because the percentage of voters who view Biden as “honest and trustworthy” has plunged since 2021, per CNN. How can the White House persuade Americans to trust Biden instead of their own “lying eyes” at gas pumps and grocery stores?

James Bovard is the author of 10 books and a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors.