Joe Biden is the Parable of the Raisin Bran

Joe Biden: Recovery from the Philadelphia Debate and the Challenge of Running a Democratic Bipartisan Term in the Post-Second World

Joe Biden’s midterm pitch is increasingly stark and alarmist as he grapples for momentum in an election seemingly slipping away from Democrats that could land him with a Congress inflicting two years of misery on his White House.

The President was on the road Thursday – not in one of the most pivotal Senate swing states – but in New York to tout semiconductor manufacturing. The fact that he showed up in a state he won by more than 20 points two years ago shows how his low approval ratings limit his capacity to help his party climb out of a hole.

The President rode into his day on the back of some unexpected good news – the economy bounced back in the last quarter at an annualized rate of 2.6%, according to initial estimates. Biden held up the figures as “further evidence that your economic recovery is continuing to power forward.”

His approach reflected the testing environment facing Democrats who are trying to keep their control of the House of Representatives as their hopes of clinging onto the Senate appear to be fading.

The Republicans plan to hit deep blue areas that could allow them to build a wave that will give them a majority in the House. Republicans only need a net gain of five seats to flip the chamber and they could win enough seats in the Empire State to do that, according to CNN commentator Harry Enten.

And races that will decide the fate of the Senate also appear to be narrowing, like in Arizona, for instance, where Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly once had a clear lead. John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Senate nominee who is facing issues after a stroke, had a shaky debate performance this week. The party has a chance to pick up a seat in the commonwealth and possibly win control of the senate if the vice president votes with them. Chuck Schumer, who was in a talk with Biden and Hochul on Thursday, said he thought the Pennsylvania debate did not hurt them, but he was concerned about the race in Georgia.

The loss of either chamber could be disastrous for the President, who is bracing for a barrage of Republican investigations targeting his administration, his handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the business affairs of his son, Hunter Biden, who is under investigation by the Justice Department.

There is sufficient uncertainty in polling following recent elections that it is far too early to properly judge the state of the race. His speech Thursday made a point of reflecting Democrats’ burdens in this election and suggested that historical pattern of first-term presidents getting a bad election may be reestablishing itself.

His speech demonstrated the political impossibility of highlighting positive aspects of the economy when inflation is raging at near 40-year highs.

Biden’s warnings of fierce political fights with Republicans over entitlements and government spending in a possible showdown over raising the debt ceiling, meanwhile, served as a preview for what may be acrimonious years to come in Washington if political control is split between the parties.

Unless we sacrifice to their demands to cut Medicare and Social Security, America will be forced into a first-ever default.

“Nothing will create more chaos or do more damage to the American economy,” the President said, admitting that Democrats always charge Social Security is at risk in elections but also arguing that proposals by Republican Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin this time really do threaten the retirement program.

But the issue is that all of those measures – if they succeed – will not unspool in time to be felt in this election. If Biden runs for reelection, they might be able to help him in 2024, but at this point, they are aspirational.

In Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, a large portion of voters said that the economy and inflation was the most important issue affecting their vote. In each state, the number of people who used to be most exercised about abortion doubled. Democrats wanted outrage over the Supreme Court decision to distract attention from their economic liabilities in the election.

The race for governor of New York is suddenly competitive, because it has not elected a Republican to the post in two decades. Biden and Hochul were in Syracuse on Thursday, which is home to a competitive House race.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/28/politics/biden-blue-states-midterm-election-analysis/index.html

The problem of the president is not that difficult: A conversation with Sen. Cindy Axne via CNN’s Phil Mattingly on a “Hot Topic”

The problem, however, is that the President was conjuring a vision of an economy that many Americans do not recognize. Democrats could doom themselves if the two realities of an economy that is performing strongly in many areas, and a living experience out in the country are not in alignment.

She admitted in an interview thatInflation is unacceptably high and Americans feel that every day.

When a voter’s income is not keeping up with their costs, especially for the staples of everyday life like meat, bread, eggs and gasoline, they are bound to look for scapegoats. And Biden, as the president in power, gets the blame.

Biden has taken steps to lower gas prices. In response to the spike in gas prices, the Biden administration released 180 million barrels of oil from the national Strategic Oil Reserve. The sale of E15 gasoline with 15% or more of corn oil was granted an emergency Waiver by the administration. The price of gas is lower now than it was before the Russian invasion began, according to a White House official.

In an interview withCNN’s Phil Mattingly on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen counseled patience since many of the measures the administration has taken to boost the economy will take time to come on line.

“People are still struggling with inflation. I grew up in a community, in a place where when my dad would say, at the end of the month, if you – what you’re making didn’t cover all your expenses, you were in real trouble,” Biden said in a virtual fundraiser this week for Iowa Rep. Cindy Axne, who faces a tough reelection.

Biden understood the problem that appeared likely to doom the Democrats this election season. There is nothing he can do to change the situation in the short term.

The Ubiquitous Campaign of President Ricardo Biden: The Importance of a Proposed Republican Action Plan for Social Security and Medicare Reform

The communications mistakes along the way were costly. In the spring of last year, the administration’s economists said inflation would be gradual. Republicans didn’t let voters forget how optimistic the assessment was.

In May, Biden used the phrase “the ultra-MAGA agenda” to describe Senator Rick Scott of Florida’s plan to require Congress to reauthorize spending for Social Security and Medicare. Republicans, including Scott, have distanced themselves from the idea.

The Democrats had accomplishments they could credibly point to that would address rising costs for families after the Inflation Reduction Act was passed. There are provisions in the legislation that allow Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs. Those policies were very popular in their isolation according to polls.

But that sentiment may have been an illusion: Polls also indicated that only a third of voters had heard of the new law and that the majority did not believe it would reduce inflation.

Biden has spoken about the economy a lot more frequently than any other topic, and he’s made over two dozen appearances for events related to the election. Even so, progressives complain that Democratic candidates neither put significant resources or energy into promoting those achievements, nor do they adequately punish Republicans for their own positions.

Democrats felt crippled, too, by the president’s poll numbers: Few candidates were eager to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a leader whose approval rating went negative in August 2021 and has hovered around the low 40s ever since.

He was met with polite appreciation from his foreign counterparts. His commitment to the belief that sat at the center of the pledge that was pilloried in the campaign as nave was underscored by his deep skepticism. Biden said the only real reassurance was that he would deliver on his promises.

This is a point that vindicates and confirms core elements of the campaign and presidency that were ridiculed, underestimated, and even mocked at various points.

Biden found a group of allies terribly affected by the events that led to the January 6 insurrection when he met in England and Belgium in 2021. But the president tried to reassure them that the visceral divides that culminated in the violence that day would heal and the bleak moment in US politics would pass.

Biden told reporters inBrussels that it was important for him to succeed in his agenda, which could include the vaccine, the economy and the infrastructure. “It’s important that we demonstrate we can make progress and continue to make progress. I think we can do that.

President Joe Biden on Thursday signed a $1.7 trillion federal spending bill that includes a number of administration priorities and officially avoids a government shutdown, ending what he called a “year of historic progress.”

If Biden says he is going to do something, he does, according to one of his closest and longest-serving advisers.

Simple as it may seem, a campaign promise or commitment has tipped internal debates on policy decisions more than once, one White House official noted.

Biden’s closest confidants also stress that it’s a perspective that is instructive as the White House prepares for the dramatically reshaped Washington that will confront him upon his return from his family vacation to the US Virgin Islands.

“The whole idea of showing people government can work – we were mocked for that in some corners,” a Biden adviser said. “That’s literally what’s happening now.”

There are still clear challenges ahead. Inflation is still high even though it appears to have abated. Biden’s advisers expect economic growth to slow in the quarters ahead, though they remain cautiously optimistic a recession can be avoided.

Biden’s approval ratings, while ticking up, remain low and his age remains a real, if less publicly addressed, concern held by Democrats as they wait for an official decision about whether he will seek reelection.

But Biden’s overarching approach has guided the early-stage planning for the legislative and political implications of a new House Republican majority and served as the basis for aides already working through the outlines of the State of the Union address that will come early next year.

It’s also a defining element of the structure and message planning of a nascent campaign that has taken shape over the last several months and accelerated. Biden’s senior team has become increasingly confident that a reelection campaign will be green lit in the weeks ahead.

White House officials think the political salience of his agenda is both anunderappreciated element and critical piece of what will come next. The prospect of divided government – and the exceedingly narrow legislative pathway it brings – has limited effect on an agenda that is now in the implementation phase.

As the nation heads into the new year, Mike Donilon, the White House senior adviser and long-standing member of Biden’s inner circle wrote in a political memo.

Biden, advisers said, has laid down strict directives to senior aides and Cabinet officials about the necessity of efficient implementation in the months ahead.

“It’s not subtle,” a senior administration official said of the message from the top. We have to fix it in the moments that we don’t get it right, and be ready to explain it.

A lot of people told him that it wasn’t relevant, that it was outdated or that it wouldn’t do him any good.

Biden’s infrastructure proposal was a central focus of his campaign as Democratic primary opponents poured out transformational progressive proposals without a realistic way to pass a divided Congress.

What the proposals – particularly across industries and policy priorities tied to climate and manufacturing – also represented was a dramatic shift in what had become an entrenched, if not monolithic, economic orthodoxy. Biden would oversee the most consequential pursuit of an industrial policy strategy in decades. He’d do so in many cases with Republican support.

The foundations of Biden’s 2020 campaign: a dynamic tool for implementing his thinking about the economy, from his senator to his son Beau

“This was the right moment for his theory of the case,” Feldman said. Throughout his career, he could apply the principles that have guided him.

Those principles have largely stayed with Biden through his time as a senator and vice president and were refined during the critical two years spent out of office as he weighed yet another run for the presidency.

“Ever since I’ve talked to the president about the economy, he’s distinguished between the short-term and the long-term, between consumption and investment,” said Jared Bernstein, Biden’s chief economist as vice president who now sits on the Council of Economic Advisers. “These have always been foundational to his economic thinking.”

The animating principles of Biden’s 2020 campaign hardly diverged from the key themes outlined by Donilon, Biden’s in-house mind-meld, in the 22-page memo he drafted in early 2015 as the then-vice president weighed jumping into the 2016 race.

Even the anecdotes from the period – whether the one about Chinese leader Xi Jinping and American “possibilities” or his father’s sayings about the dignity of work, or the importance of “breathing room” – are the same that populate his speeches as president.

As a member of the White House legislative team, he pointed to a line from Biden’s days as a senator through his years as vice president and his first two years as president.

The grief of his son Beau’s battle with brain cancer weighed on Biden as he wrote a book about his decision not to run for president. That process and the book tour that followed are viewed by Biden’s inner circle as an essential experience in the eventual decision to run in 2020.

If the effort to turn that foundation into a coherent policy agenda was accelerated and expanded in the final months of the campaign, it was turbocharged during a transition that saw Democrats take control of the Senate majority.

Officials structured the infrastructure, manufacturing, research and development, climate and equity proposals into interlocking pieces, designed to work in tandem even if they were eventually scaled back during the legislative process.

The architect of the package said in an interview that the power of it is that it works together.

It is clear that subscribing to the term “industrial policy” isn’t universally embraced. Deese preferred the modern American industrial strategy. In its simplest form, it is the idea that if you invest in a thoughtful way, you will be crowd in private investment.

A resurgence in research and development funding. There are significant public investments designed for critical areas. The elevation of labor unions and a focus on creating the conditions to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/28/politics/joe-biden-2022/index.html

The Rise of China, or How the U.S. Will Lead the World: a Memoir from a Presidential Candidate

These issues are politically popular and not exclusive to Biden. They’re also exceedingly difficult to turn into policy. At least until the end of time.

The bipartisan urgency behind the CHIPS and Science law was driven by the tiny chips essential for everything from cars and washing machines to advanced weapons systems. The effort on Capitol Hill was driven by an Indiana senator up for reelection in 2022, who underscored the salience of the issue.

For Young, who had pressed for legislation tied to the issue in the year before Biden entered the White House, it was less about embracing a broader shift in economic policy and more about addressing the fact China had pursued exactly that for a decade or longer. Young was one of 17 Senate Republicans who voted to advance the eventual law that has driven new private sector investment or commitments in the last several months.

The pandemic. The rise of China as key feature of policy making in both parties. A president was animated by the idea of long-term economic incentives that could connect workers and communities.

Kaufman, who was the Senate chief of staff for Biden, and is one of his closest friends, said that knowing what you are doing has a lot to do with confidence. “This is a guy who is so incredibly well qualified to be president because of experience.”

In a way it’s both an implicit acknowledgment of the unprecedented factors – most notably Trump, but in some ways the pandemic as well – that created an opening to the presidency for Biden. Advisers think that it would not be a question of if Biden would win. He wouldn’t have even run.

Perhaps most critically for Biden, the voters sharply reject some of the most extreme voices parroting 2020 election lies in critical races for governor and secretary of state.

Biden began to recount his experience with foreign counterparts on the first foreign trip as a way to underscore the stakes in the election.

He was ready to give an updated version as he stood surrounded by a new factory that was about to be announced by a Taiwanese chip maker, which would prove to be one of the largest foreign investments in US history.

According to Biden, the United States is better positioned to lead the world economy than any other nation.

“It’ll invest in medical research, safety, veteran health care, disaster recovery, (Violence Against Women Act) funding – and gets crucial assistance to Ukraine,” Biden wrote in a tweet.

On Wednesday the White House received the bill from Congress. The bill was delivered to the President for his signature by White House staff on a regularly scheduled commercial flight,” a White House official told pool reporters.

It is the second time this year that a bill has been sent to Biden for his signature. The staffer who was carrying the bill on the trip was scheduled to travel to the region. Biden signed the bill while overseas.

The legislation includes $772.5 billion for nondefense discretionary programs and $858 billion in defense funding, according to a bill summary from Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations. That represents an increase in spending in both areas for fiscal year 2023.

The emergency aid to Ukraine is part of a package that also includes protections for pregnant workers and an amendment to retirement savings rules.

It also will provide a boost in spending for disaster aid, college access, child care, mental health and food assistance, more support for the military and veterans and additional funds for the US Capitol Police, according to Leahy’s summary and one from Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee. The legislation contains a provision that could disenroll 19 million people from the health program for low-income Americans.

Several measures that lawmakers fought to include were left out of the bill. An expansion of the child tax credit was one of many tax breaks that did not make it into the final bill. Legislation to help Afghan evacuees in the US gain lawful permanent residency was not included in the Safe Banking Act. And the spending package did not include a White House request for roughly $10 billion in additional funding for Covid-19 response.

The spending bill, which will keep the government operating through September is the product of lengthy negotiations between top congressional Democrats and Republicans.

Dan White, senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics – an economics firm whose assessments Biden has repeatedly cited during his presidency – told CNN’s Matt Egan in October: “On net, the policies of the administration have increased the deficit, not reduced it.” The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group, wrote in September that Biden’s actions will add more than $4.8 trillion to deficits from 2021 through 2031, or $2.5 trillion if you don’t count the American Rescue Plan pandemic relief bill of 2021.

The deficit-reducing impact of that one bill is expected to be swamped by the deficit-increasing impact of additional bills and policies Biden has approved.

The Growth of Business Applications in the United States in 2021: When President Biden Conveiled His Reform Laws, He Created His First Job, and the Job Creation Rate Increased In 2022

First, facts: This is true. There were about 5.4 million business applications in 2021, the highest number since 2005 (the first year for which the federal government released this data for a full year), and about 5.1 million business applications in 2022. The number of business applications that were deemed to have high probabilities of turning into businesses with a payroll reached a new high in the year of 2021, reaching its second-fastest total.

Former President Donald Trump’s last full year in office, 2020, also set a then-record for total and high propensity applications. There are various reasons for the pandemic-era boom in entrepreneurship, which began after millions of Americans lost their jobs in early 2020. Some newly unemployed workers took the chance to start their own businesses, while interest rates were low until a series of rate hikes began in the spring of 2022.

The rate of unemployment for black people was 5.6% in January, just above the all-time low of 5.3% set in August. This data series goes back a long way. The rate was 9.2% in January 2021, the month Biden took office.

Charles Blahous, a researcher at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University who authored the 2021 paper “Why We Have Federal Deficits,” wrote that the impact of recent legislation on the long-term structural fiscal imbalance is dwarfed by the creation of Medicare and Medicaid and increases to Social Security, all of which occurred between 1965 and 1972.

Biden is free to argue that his stimulus legislation and other policies have helped the country gain jobs faster than it otherwise would have. (As always, it’s debatable precisely how much credit the president deserves for job-creation.) It is clear that there were only such extraordinary number of jobs added in the year of 2020 because there were already so many jobs lost in the early part of the year.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

The Impact of the United States Free Trade Agreement on Electric Vehicle Partitions in the US: Implications for Tax Credits and Supply Chains

This claim needs to be explained. EV tax credits will be available in the future, but it could take years for their availability.

The nonprofit Rewiring America estimated last year that a household can save up to $2,500 per year by having electric heat pumps and replacing a gas vehicle with an EV.

New electric vehicles can be eligible for up to $2,500. But there’s a big catch: in order to qualify for these tax credits, the vehicles’ final assembly must happen in North America. The IRA requires electric vehicle components be made in the US or other countries that have a free trade deal with the US.

The US Treasury Department is expected to issue guidance on critical minerals and batteries in March. But the complex requirements for these tax credits could take years to fully kick in as companies must move their supply chain to North America.

The provision passed because Manchin wanted the U.S. to be competitive with China on electric cars, and it will eventually have a negative effect on the countries it has a free trade agreement with. The measure has already resulted in several companies announcing new factories in the US.

As vehicle manufacturers move their supply chains to the US and North America, the provision will take time to be implemented, meaning they won’t be able to give credit in the next few years.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

The State of the Union and the Cost of Gas for a Child’s Education: Biden’s Unemployment Increase and the Baby Tax Credit

This is true. The child poverty rate was slashed in part by the expansion of the child tax credit. The enhancement accounted for the bulk of the reduction.

The child poverty rate fell from 9.7% in 2020 to 5.2% in 2021, according to the US Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure, which takes into account certain non-cash government assistance, tax credits and needed expenses.

As part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act that passed in March 2021, Congress enhanced the child tax credit for one year, beefing up payments to $3,600 for each child up to age 6 and $3,000 for each one ages 6 through 17, for lower- and middle-income families. Half the credit was paid monthly in July and December, while parents could claim the other half when they filed their taxes.

The national average for a gallon of regular gas was more than $3 in the day before the State of the Union. That was down more than a dollar from a record high in June. But it was still up from a national average of $2.393 on Biden’s Inauguration Day in January 2021.

The price of gas is not directly related to a president’s policy, as we consistently note, even though the president might boast about a decline in gas prices or be criticized for an increase.

He said Biden’s releases of oil from the strategic reserve would have little or no impact on the price of oil.

I stand here tonight and see 12 million jobs created in two years, which is more jobs than any president has created in four years.

The economy quickly recovered that summer, growing at an annualized rate of 35.3% in the third quarter of 2020, the fastest pace on record. The pace of growth in the economy began to slow before Biden took office.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

The Biden Legacy: Freedom House Report on the Status of Democracy in the Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule, or is Democracy under Siege?

While extolling his ability to stand up to leaders in Russia and China, Biden painted himself as a champion of freedom and wrongly claimed that democracy was being spread under his watch.

This claim is at odds with what Freedom House has to say about democracy and human rights around the world. Over the last few years, they say democracy has been in decline.

The global expansion of Authoritarian Rule was the topic of the most recent annual report by the group. Their 2021 report was called, “Democracy under Siege.”

According to the data, 60 countries had some kind of backsliding in the previous year, while only 25 improved their position. When the Taliban reclaimed power when Biden withdrew all American troops from the country, they were highlighted by the group.

Freedom House’s most recent report is one year old, with a new report likely coming out soon. Biden could simply be saying that autocratic regimes have lost their prestige on the world stage.

The trends seem to be holding. Russian President Vladimir Putin rolled back civil liberties in his country after invadingUkraine last year.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

No-poaching by a Fast Food Chain in Washington State: Are EV Chargers Worthwhile? The Case of Fast Food in the U.S.

Pete Buttigieg, the Secretary of the DOT, said in an interview with a climate publication that the number of EV charger on the roads depends on how the states choose to mix fast and slow charging.

There is also a wide range in how much different types of chargers cost, and individual states have a lot of leeway in deciding what kinds of chargers will go on their roads. DC fast chargers can charge a car to mostly full in 20 minutes to an hour and are meant to go on major highways and roads. An L2charger can take hours to charge a car to full. But DC fast chargers are much more expensive, costing around $100,000 compared to around $6,000 for an L2, Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, a senior resident fellow at the think tank Third Way, has told CNN.

Preliminary data from the BLS shows that the hourly wage in the manufacturing industry was $32.57 for employees and $25.84 for production and non-supervisory positions in January. Nationally, the average hourly wage was a projected $33.03. From CNN’s Alicia Wallace

I did not know about this until two years ago. Thirty million workers had to agree not to work for someone else if they took their job. Thirty million dollars. It is impossible for a cashier at a burger place to go across town and work at another place that makes more money. Well, they just changed it because we exposed it. That was part of the deal, guys, look it up.

This is not true the first time. Millions of rank-and-file employees and independent contractors, in addition to business executives across industries, have signed non-compete agreements that critics say suppress competition, wages and entrepreneurship. The Federal Trade Commission in January proposed a rule to ban employers from imposing those agreements on workers and to rescind all existing noncompete agreements. Burger chain workers could be subject to those noncompete agreements. It is not likely anymore.

The investigation found that several fast food chains in Washington state, including McDonald’s, Buffalo Wild Wings and Jimmy John’s, were violating no-poaching rules. By 2018, all those chains agreed to end their no-poach practices at roughly 25,000 restaurants nationwide. From CNN’s David Goldman

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

Inflation, Work and Welfare: Resolving the Biden-Biden Debt Controversy in House and Senate Budget Debates

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that food prices were up 10.4% in December. Since hitting a 40-year high, food price inflation has steadily declined, as measured by theCPI.

In December, the overall inflation was 6.5%. Since hitting a 40-year high of 9.1% in June of 2022, the headline inflation rate has declined for six consecutive months.

The average change of the prices over time for a basket of consumer goods is an indicator of inflation, and has moderated in recent months. There are a variety of measures used to gauge inflation. Core inflation measures exclude items with more volatile prices.

Biden says that take- home pay has gone up, if you start calculating seven months ago; wages began rising as inflation slowed. However, real wages are lower today than they were both a full year ago and at the beginning of Biden’s presidency in January 2021. It was so high in the beginning of the 20th century.

GOP lawmakers want to cut Social Security and Medicare, according to Biden. The drama has flared up again in recent weeks amid the debt ceiling debate. Lifting the borrowing cap is tied to spending reductions.

The wealthy should be paying their fair share, according to Republicans who want Medicare and Social Security to end. … It means if Congress does not keep the programs the same, they will go away.

For instance, the conservative lawmakers proposed raising Medicare’s eligibility age to be in line with the normal retirement age for Social Security, which currently is 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later, and then indexing it to life expectancy. But they would also raise the normal retirement age for Social Security, as well as trim benefits for higher-income earners.

The Speaker of the House reiterated on Monday that there won’t be cuts to Medicare or Social Security in the debt ceiling discussions. From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Facts First: While some Democrats have joined calls for a radical shift in police policy, including a reduction in police budgets, Biden and top congressional Democrats have not supported and even rejected calls to “defund the police.”

It’s worth noting that the slogan “defund the police” means different things to different activists – from the dissolution of police forces to partial reductions in funding.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

The Trump-Biden War: The First Three Years of World Warfare and the US Border Patrol Discovered a New Record

When Trump was in office, it was ridiculous to say that there was world peace.

When Trump left office, the war was still going on. (Under Trump and Obama, the US supported Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in the war through arms sales. Biden ended that policy in 2021.)

When Biden took office the war in Afghanistan was ongoing and still being waged by Trump. When Biden was sworn in as the new president, there were thousands of US troops in the country.

The Syrian civil war was continuing at a more isolated level than in the past. There was a war going on in the Tigray region. Deaths and disappearances are still occurring in Mexico due to the drug war.

Additionally, the war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region was still unresolved. The war began in 2014, but had settled into a “frozen conflict,” with Russian proxies occupying a large chunk of the eastern Donbas region, and Ukrainian troops dug into trenches. Russia invaded after Biden took office in February of 2022, sparking a full-blown war. From CNN’s Marshall Cohen

Republicans and Democrats have different definitions of crises. Republicans have argued that the increase in migrants at the border is evidence of an “open border” under President Joe Biden despite the administration still using a Trump-era Covid restriction, whereas Democrats have described it as a humanitarian crisis reflective of the poor conditions at home. From CNN.

The US Border patrol encountered 2.2 million people attempting to cross the US southern border in a single fiscal year, setting a new record.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html

The US Economy Bounced Back from the End of the Covid Era During the First Half of the 2021-2019 Pandemic

Facts First: This is partially true, but it lacks context. The US economy was bouncing back from the steepest job losses America had ever faced from the Covid shutdowns at the beginning of the pandemic.

The US gross domestic product grew at a rate of 4.1% in the fourth quarter of 2020 and then lost jobs in December. Biden’s stimulus bill helped juice the economy in 2021, although that helped stoke an inflation crisis caused in part by pandemic-related supply chain disruptions and exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – a war that continues to impact the global economy to this day.