OPINION:
The pundits who cover politics like to say there are people out there who might have voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020 but instead cast their ballots for President Biden because he’d do a better job managing the government.
If there are, they’re likely experiencing a bad case of buyer’s remorse. Mr. Biden’s term, which is less than half over, has seen most of the economic gains made under Mr. Trump reversed. Inflation is at a 40-year high — and likely going higher. The stock market is down so much that nearly $10 trillion in wealth has been wiped off the books. The energy sector is imploding thanks to his administration’s unending push toward unreliable, unproven renewables at the expense of proven, plentiful sources of fuel for the nation’s cars and power plants. And, as the polls and surveys all show, confidence about the future is down among consumers, small business owners and investors.
The outlook for America is bleak. Yet each time the president is asked about these problems he shrugs them off, saying they’re “transitory” or makes an excuse, like blaming the rapid increase in the price of gasoline on Russian President Vladimir Putin instead of his energy policies.
Team Biden’s inability to fix what’s wrong is becoming a crisis. The president may, after spending just about his entire life drawing his paycheck from the United States government, know something about pulling the switches and moving the levers of power that make departments and agencies function. Unfortunately, he knows nothing about what to do with them because he doesn’t know what America needs.
Like 67 other top members of his team including Vice President Kamala Harris, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young and the members of his Council of Economic Advisers, Mr. Biden has no real-world work experience to inform his decision-making.
In fact, according to a study just released by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, 62% of the Biden appointees whose jobs touch on economic policy, regulations, commerce, energy and finance never held a private-sector job. The vast majority are professional politicians, lawyers, community organizers, academics, lobbyists and government employees. What they know about how the U.S. economy operates all comes, as they used to say, from “book learnin’.”
What they do know, it can be inferred from their resumes, is how to fundraise from wealthy ideologues, the economics of trading favors, and how to grease the skids to get an ivory tower idea turned into legislation or regulation. They know how to play the “Inside the Beltway” game and, from what we’ve seen so far, they’re not very good at it. Unless crashing the economy was the plan all along.
Let’s hope it wasn’t and that the mistakes that have been made were made in the earnest belief that wrecking the energy sector, driving consumer and wholesale prices up, and bringing inflation back with a vengeance were made with the best of intentions.
It should go without saying that none of that is good for the country but it can’t be overlooked. As economist Stephen Moore, who spearheaded the study said, “Instead of having the best minds in America working on the country’s economic problems, the president is relying on political and policy stooges who couldn’t make a garden grow, let alone the U.S. GDP.”
He’s right. There are too many people making policy right now who don’t know what it’s like to depend on business activity to meet a payroll or the things that go into manufacturing a product. Replace them now, before the midterms, with people who understand the reality of economic life in America.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.