Biden telling tall tales. Again. Thanks to Gateway Pundit and Fox for the background.
Former Reagan administration economist Larry Kudlow destroyed President Joe Biden’s claims Wednesday that Bidenomics is “working” and superior to Reaganomics.
In a speech in Chicago, Biden said, “I knew we couldn’t go back to the same failed policies when I ran, so I came into office determined to change the economic direction of this country, to move from trickle-down economics to what everyone on Wall Street Journal and Financial Times began to call ‘Bidenomics.’”
“Trickle-down economics” is the derisive term leftists use to try to dismiss the economic boom the nation experienced under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, when the economy grew an entire third larger, adding over 16 million jobs.
“And guess what? Bidenomics is working,” the president claimed. “When I took office, the pandemic was raging and our economy was reeling, supply chains were broken, millions of people unemployed, hundreds of thousands of small businesses on the verge of closing after so many had already closed — literally, hundreds of thousands on the verge of closing.
“Today, the U.S. has the highest economic growth rate, leading the world economies since the pandemic. The highest in the world.”
It’s not clear exactly what criteria Biden was using, but according to Statista, India’s GDP growth rate in 2022 was 6.8 percent, Canada’s was 3.4 percent and China’s was 2.99 percent, while in the U.S. it was 2.1 percent.
The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the GDP growth rate for the first quarter of 2023 was 2 percent. So Biden appears to be prevaricating again.
He also claimed that his administration has created 13.4 million jobs since taking office. “More jobs in two years than any president has ever made in four — in two,” the president said Wednesday.
The GOP-controlled House Budget Committee and other fact-checkers have pointed out Biden’s characterization of new jobs his administration created is misleading because most were simply jobs added back following the pandemic.
“Nearly 72 percent of all job gains since 2021 were simply jobs that were being recovered from the pandemic, not new job creation. In fact, when looking at today’s economy compared to pre-pandemic levels, employment is up only by 3.7 million,” the committee said.
“On the other hand, prior to the pandemic, job creation under President [Donald] Trump was 6.7 million — 3 million more jobs than the current President,” it said.
In fact, when Biden took office in January 2021, the unemployment rate had already dropped from a pandemic high of 14.7 percent in April 2020 to 6.3 percent. It is now 3.7 percent.
So the economy was not “reeling” but well on the way to recovery when Biden became president, with Trump’s pro-growth policies still in place.
Kudlow, who was Trump’s top economist in addition to working for Reagan, noted on his Fox Business program Wednesday the “reeling” GDP growth rate when Trump left office was 6.5 percent. CNBC reported it at 6.3 percent during the first quarter of 2021 before Biden’s policies began to kick in.
