US President Joe Biden speaks about his economic plan at LIUNA Training Center in DeForest, Wisconsin, on February 8, 2023. - (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Visits: 18
Biden and the Undocumented taking American worker jobs. Joey boy was in Wisconsin talking about his job creation. Creation for who?
Data published in the New York Times shows that the Biden administration is aiding employers by adding millions of foreign workers to the labor force — ensuring wages stay stagnant — even as native-born Americans struggle to get back into jobs since the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
“The foreign-born workforce grew much more quickly than the U.S.-born workforce, Labor Department figures show,” the Timesreports:
“When the unemployment rate goes down, you would normally expect wage inflation to go up, but that’s not what’s happening,” said Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management. “So there must be something else moving in the labor force, and there is a very likely explanation here that immigrants are coming in and taking jobs.” [Emphasis added]
But despite the resurgence in the foreign-born labor force — about four-fifths of it are people legally allowed to work in the United States, by one calculation — there are bottlenecks. [Emphasis added]
Chart via New York Times
“What the Democrats have never explained is … how working families are helped by flooding the labor market with cheap illegal labor,” Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) said last week during a congressional hearing.
Adrian Monck served for over a decade as one of Klaus Schwab’s top deputies.
Adrian Monck, the managing editor and comms director of WEF, announced the news in a LinkedIn post. Monck oversaw the WEF’s notorious Young Global Leaders and Global Shapers programs, which Schwab infamously bragged had helped the outfit to “penetrate the cabinets” of foreign governments.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) and its benefactors continue to face major headwinds, as a global resistance has formed against the organization’s advocacy for a two-tiered feudalistic society. What was once a shadowy-by-design network has been forced into the mainstream spotlight, and the blowback to the WEF was on display for the world to see in its 2023 Davos conference.
The WEF’s extremist agenda, which advances tyrannical, anti-human narratives such as “The Great Reset” and “Build Back Better,” among others, met several unexpected challenges at Davos through independent and non-institutional media operations.
One Japanese journalist even got a few questions in with Schwab, who was incredibly displeased with this impromptu interview attempt.
我那覇真子 Masako Ganaha @ganaha_masako
I encountered Klaus Schwab! And here is what happened. He is afraid of our resistance! @ WEF Davos2023
In the United States, several Republican members of Congress even backed out of Davos after The Dossier reported on their planned participation in the confab.
The Dossier
Abandon Ship: Republicans in U.S. WEF delegation reverse course on Davos trip
Monday marked the first day of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual confab in Davos, and the U.S. congressional to the ruling class gathering was noticeably slimmer than advertised.
274 likes · 105 comments · Jordan Schachtel
At Davos 2023, Monck cut a free promo for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to the expressed approval of the Chinese state media operations that were invited to the meeting.
Just weeks before its annual invite-only, closed-door gathering in Davos, Monck sought to mitigate the reputational damage to the WEF, churning out a series of articles claiming the outfit is the victim of “disinformation campaigns.”
In one such piece that was published in The Globe and Mail, Monck declares that “a Russian propaganda campaign” is to blame for people’s negative perception of the WEF.
“The intent was apparently to spread disinformation in a bid to stir far-right outrage about COVID-19 and perpetuate domestic extremism,” the retiring WEF comms chief rants. “The means was often via bots that would push far-right conspiracy theories to communities on boards such as 4chan.”
In calling for a global censorship and surveillance regime akin to the one installed by the Chinese government, Monck declared:
“The consequences of unabated misinformation are dangerous. Misinformation concerning COVID-19 and vaccines cost lives during the pandemic. The revelations around the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot reveal how false information about elections can threaten the foundations of democracy.”
Monck has not publicly revealed his plans for the future.
Davos Elites Cheer the Policies That Would Harm Those With the Least
By Chandre Dharma-wardana for Real Clear Markets
While eating caviar and sipping on fine wine, wealthy elites at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos hobnobbed with an assortment of academics, government leaders, and environmental activists to discuss their plans for a global transition in agricultural production. They all agreed that the conventional practices now feeding the world need to be scrapped and replaced by organic-style farming, which they claimed would help fight climate change and make food systems more secure.
They emphasized tying aid to the world’s 600 million smallholder farmers with efforts to “encourage” the adoption of organic methods, which they described with all the familiar buzzwords, such as “regenerative” and “sustainable. But the new fashion is “agroecology,” which not only prohibits modern pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, and GMOs, but discourages mechanization as well.
One wonders if these entitled leaders took a momentary pause in their deliberations to consider the ongoing suffering and starvation in Sri Lanka, where past president Gotabhaya Rajapaksa took this kind of advice and bought into the fantasy of becoming the world’s first “fully organic and toxin free” nation.
Amid cheers from Davos-type eco-extremists, Rajapaksa proudly announced his plans at the 2021 Glasgow Climate Summit. Almost overnight, he banned agrochemicals and forced growers to adopt organic farming and become “in sync” with nature.
Shortly after in July 2022, Rajapaksa fled for his life amid mass protests and chaos as agricultural output dropped by 40%. Even today, more than 43% of children under five suffer from malnutrition there.
The Davos elites trumpet organic agriculture as the way to end food insecurity, even though it yields 35% less food per acre on average and could not possibly sustain the current population, let alone the almost 10 billion predicted by 2050. Their Swiss experts admit, and researchers confirm, that it cannot be scaled-up to feed even half the current world population.
In fact, every sustainability goal touted in Davos would be undermined by a shift to organic. Being 35% less productive means 50% more land needed to grow the same amount of food. Massively increasing farmland means cutting down forests and destroying habitat. That would devastate biodiversity and produce 50% to 70% more greenhouse gasses (GHGs).
Organic promoters should admit that organic farmers use lots of pesticides. They’re just older, less-targeted pesticides like copper sulfate, which are broadly toxic to humans and wildlife and must be used in greater amounts because they’re less effective.
Just weeks before the WEF at this year’s Conference of the Parties, a.k.a. the UN Convention on Climate Change in Egypt (COP27) and the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Montreal (COP15), leaders were singing the same bad tune, calling for “regenerative agriculture,” “sustainable intensification” and the word on everyone’s lips: “agroecology.”
This cocktail of sustainability terms is just unsustainable peasant farming rebottled, and these efforts are the bastard children of policymakers infected with activist-fed misinformation.
It’s not just that more land is needed for organic. GHG emissions are increased because farmers must till (plow) fields or flood them to control weeds, rather than use modern herbicides. Replacing 100kg of synthetic fertilizer requires 2-3 tons of organic compost, and organic manures made from farm waste contain phyto-accumulated heavy-metal toxins from soils, promoting dangerous runoff.
Conventional agriculture tripled farmland productivity between 1948 and 2019. Globally, it boosted cereal production over 300%. Though the cognoscenti pretend otherwise, conventional agriculture has adopted many truly regenerative practices. In no-till agriculture, farmers use herbicides, like atrazine and glyphosate, to control weeds instead of machine tilling.
Yes, atrazine and glyphosate reduce erosion and create higher-quality soil. They also reduce CO2 emissions by 280,000 metric tons and save 588 million gallons of diesel annually—equivalent to the emissions of 1 million cars. And, no, these herbicides are not bad for people and the environment. Atrazine does not leach into groundwater, as Health Canada showed in response to EU’s atrazine ban; and glyphosate does not cause cancer, as evidenced by the world’s largest and longest health study.
The wealthy elites steering the WEF and COP could make progress toward their laudable goals if they base their policies on such demonstrable facts, rather than fashionable organic fantasies.
Replacing 100kg of synthetic fertilizer requires 2-3 tons of organic compost, and organic manures made from farm waste contain phyto-accumulated heavy-metal toxins
Yet the pseudo-ecology haunting COP27, COP15, Davos and the EU channels the planet’s food security, biodiversity, and GHG mitigation efforts toward disaster, as Sri Lanka could attest.
So these leaders fly home on their greenhouse-gas-emitting jets, unaware or uncaring about the human and environmental damage their policies are promoting.
Now we know why there’s a HIGHWAY to HELL but only a STAIRWAY to HEAVEN.
The GOP is likely to find itself in an uncomfortable position as funding from the Inflation Reduction Act plays a growing role in Republicans home states and districts. | Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP Photo
Visits: 14
Hey Progressives, guess who’s benefitting from your green spending? Red states. Biden’s Climate law has had a reverse effect on blue states. They’re not getting the green energy benefits like they had hoped. They’re going to the red states. And why’s that?
My guess is that the cost to build wind, solar shields, and electric battery plants are going to red states. Roughly two-thirds of the major projects are in districts whose Republican lawmakers opposed the Inflation Reduction Act, according to a POLITICO analysis of major green energy manufacturing announcements made since the bill’s enactment.
It’s a start. Dell to Phase Out All Computer Chips Produced in China. No they’re not coming to the USA, but they’re pulling out of China by 2024. So it’s a start. As you know, China is the Progressives favorite, replacing Russia. We see that HP has also announced that they will be leaving China.
Nikkei Asia reports that Dell has told its suppliers to significantly reduce the number of components in its products that are “made in China” in an effort to diversify its supply chain as concerns over tensions between the US and China grow in the tech community. According to sources, the company has also informed its suppliers that it aims to stop using chips made in China by 2024. Dell reportedly plans to manufacture all chips used in its products in plants outside of China by 2024.
Apple reportedly plans to start making its MacBook notebooks in Vietnam by mid-2023, which means the company will have some alternative non-China production bases for all of its major product lines.
One of the white house clowns put out a list of Joey boys accomplishments the past two years. But I have to say I’m a bit puzzled. For some reason a complete list wasn’t posted. So I thought that I will include just a few of the items that somehow got left off. How these items were not on this impressive list amazes me.
Airplane travel is 46% higher this year over last year. And last year was 38% higher than the year before. How about gasoline. Still on average $1.50 a gallon higher than 2020. And how can we forget inflation?
Inflation at 40 year high, and the administration brags how they got it under control at 8%. I’m sure that put you at ease. Having Turkey tomorrow? Only 20% higher than last year. Last year 15% higher than the year before. And those 4 or 5 million undocumented?
Thanks to Joe you can invite one of the millions of undocumented folks over for Thanksgiving. Maybe they can show you their new phone the government gave them for free. And Joe’s great record on Crime.
Mass shootings are up this year and last year up over the year before. A record to truly be proud of. So in closing it looks like the only thing that Joe can claim he brought down was wages and spendable income after you figure in inflation. Walk and be proud Joe.
Signage stands in front of the closed General Motors Co. (GM) plant in Lordstown, Ohio, U.S., on Sunday, Oct. 13, 2019. GM announced it would cease production at plants in Ohio, Maryland, Michigan and Ontario by the end of this year, including ending production of the Chevrolet Cruze in Lordstown as part of a realignment that will cut excess production and use more resources for electric and self-driving vehicles. Photographer: Matthew Hatcher/Bloomberg
Visits: 38
We saw the sucking sound of Jobs start under the second Bush. Gave Tax credits to American companies that created jobs. Only problem was that the companies created them overseas and off shore.
Obama really picked up on that. The job loss was huge. Progressives jumped on Trump when GM announced the final closing of several plants including one in my back yard. But under my Congressman Tim Ryan the area lost 25,000 manufacturing jobs during his tenure.
EmploymentEffects A large body of literature addresses the impact of trade and trade policy shocks on levels of employment across geographic regions, industries, and workers. Much of this literature has documented that increased U.S. imports from low–wage economies reduce domestic employment inimport–competing industries. Research broadly finds that U.S. workers in import–competing industries experienced significantly higher rates of unemployment or underemployment, transition to different industries or occupations, or exit from the labor force.The effects of exports on employmentremainslargely underresearched,butexisting studiessuggest that exporting may positively impact employment outcomes.
•Employment effects across different education and skill levels: Existing research finds evidence that trade shocks have led to different employment outcomes for workers acrosseducation and skill levels. The literature is clear that increased offshoring and import competition from low– wage economies reduced employment for manufacturing workers commonly defined as low–skill. However, other dimensions, including effects of exports or services trade, remain relatively underresearched, with only a small number of studies.
•Employment effects by gender: Literature on the impact of trade on theemploymentandlabor force participation of men and women in the United States links trade exposure to the gender composition of the labor force in different industries, showing that men are more likely to work in import–competing firms that tend to contract with increased import competition. The literature shows inconclusive effects of trade liberalization on labor force participation by gender.
•Employment effects by race/ethnicity: Literature on the impact of trade on employment and labor force outcomes by race or ethnicity is limited and predominantly focuses on measuring impacts of imports on Black and Hispanic workers, but not other racial minority groups. The limited literature shows that, in the face of trade shocks, Black and other Nonwhite workers fare worse than their White counterparts.
Wage Effects A substantial body of research has documented the effects of various trade policy shocks on wages and income across different groups of workers. Researchers have found that wage andincome vary significantly depending on workers’ exposure to trade shocks, whether workers change occupations or industries in response to a shock, as well as worker characteristics such as educational attainment, gender, or race. •Wage effects across different education and skill levels: Several studies find that import competition–induced transitions between industries and occupations significantly reduce earnings for workers and these adverse wage effects are especially pronounced for non–college– educatedworkers or those previously employed in manufacturing jobs. Conversely, college– educated workers and non–production manufacturing workers such as managers experience lower or no wage or income loss following trade–induced employment transitions. •Wage effects by gender: Literature on the impact of trade on wages by gender suggests that the gender wage gap declines in the presence of import competition. This result is generally not due
Executive Summary United States International Trade Commission |19 to increases in wages of women but rather declines in wages of men who switch out of import– competing sectors. •Wage effects by race/ethnicity: Literature on the impact of trade on wages by race or ethnicity is limited and predominantly focused on measuring the impact of imports on Black and Hispanic workers, but not other minority groups. The limited literature suggests that import competition had a large and disproportionately negative effect on wages of minority
So what happens when you go after Conservatives who are some of your biggest customers? Huge losses, layoffs, and major cutbacks. They thought they would go after one of the leading Presidential candidates and not suffer for it?
The moves come after Disney reported disappointing quarterly results. Shares of the company fell sharply Wednesday, hitting a new 52-week low, before rebounding later in the week.
McCarthy said during Disney’s earnings call Tuesday that the company was looking for ways to trim costs.
“We are actively evaluating our cost base currently, and we’re looking for meaningful efficiencies,” she said. “Some of those are going to provide some near-term savings, and others are going to drive longer-term structural benefits.”
Disney’s streaming services lost $1.47 billion last quarter, more than double the unit’s loss from a year prior. McCarthy said losses will improve in 2023, and Chapek has promised streaming will become profitable by the end of 2024.
Other large media and entertainment companies, including Warner Bros. Discovery and Netflix, have cut jobs this year as valuations have slumped. Disney hasn’t announced any plans to eliminate jobs.
It does my heart good to see that companies worldwide are expanding production of oil and gas. We have this from our friends at Breitbart.
A German non-governmental organization (NGO) called Urgewald, which monitors carbon emissions, presented a report at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt that said nearly all of the oil and gas companies in the world are planning significant expansions over the next few years, in a dramatic rebuttal of the climate change movement’s demand for zero emissions.
“The outcome of our calculations is truly frightening: oil and gas companies’ short-term expansion plans are not in line with the net zero emissions course put forward by the IEA (International Energy Agency),” said Urgenwald’s Fiona Hauke.
Gaslight Joe and energy prices Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times
Gaslight Joe and energy prices Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times
Their policies are aligned to fight climate change — not lowering your prices at the pump
OPINION:
Earlier this week, President Biden just couldn’t resist exposing either his ignorance about energy, his hostility to affordable energy, or both.
He threatened oil companies with a tax on their profits. Such a tax would, of course, be paid for by consumers and — rather than increase production and reduce prices, like Mr. Biden says he wants — would do the exact opposite and reduce production and increase prices of gasoline and other oil products. Here’s a news flash: The president and his team don’t care.
The call for a tax on profits is the just like the proposed suspension of the federal gas tax, the very real emptying of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve or the limits on exports that are currently being considered. All of these actions — and the associated tiresome rhetoric — are all intended to convince the voters that Team Biden really cares about high gasoline prices.
They don’t. They are perfectly content to have you pay high gas prices. There’s no way any of their fantasies about climate change can happen without high energy prices, specifically high oil and natural gas prices.
They just don’t want you to blame them for those prices. So, naturally, they are looking around for someone else to blame. It is no surprise that they’ve landed on oil companies.
Unfortunately for them, oil companies don’t set the price of oil. Neither does any one particular producer or consumer. The price is set in a global market with lots of buyers and lots of sellers who agree on a price and then exchange cash for oil. This sort of thing happens in all kinds of markets all over the planet each day.
Prices of oil are going up because demand is high relative to supply. Despite the lie the president tells you, this is not because of the war in Ukraine. That conflict has not prevented any Russian oil from coming to the global market.
The imbalance between demand and supply is primarily because of under investment in oil fields over the last decade. For example, Josh Young, the chief investment officer at Bison Energy, notes that investment in U.S. oil fields peaked in 2012 at about $16.5 billion dollars and dropped as low as $3.9 billion in 2021.
Last summer, the International Energy Agency concluded: “Our estimates for 2022 suggest that today’s aggregate fossil fuel investment is broadly aligned with the near-term needs of a scenario in which countries hit their climate pledges.”
In other words, the IEA acknowledges the reduced investment in oil and gas projects and considers it a good thing because that lack of investment will ultimately mean less oil and natural gas and, consequently, help countries meet their climate pledges. The IEA — like Team Biden — is mostly unconcerned about high energy prices.
While they are not responsible for global markets, Team Biden is responsible for the relentless downward pressure on American production of oil. Their emphasis on environmental, social, and governance-based investing means that investors are steered away from investments in oil and natural gas. The now routine propaganda — mostly from the government — about the mythology of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions and an energy “transition” that has destroyed Europe’s energy system and is chewing through its economy further drives under investment in oil and natural gas.
Is there a different answer?
Well, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity has estimated that American oil production would be about 30% higher (or about 3 million barrels a day more) if Team Biden had just kept President Donald Trump’s policies in place.
That would be too easy. Team Biden has no intention of addressing the underlying problem of national and global under investment in oil and gas production and refineries over the last few years. To the contrary, their actions — weaponizing financial regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission against affordable energy, not allowing production on federal lands, even something as trivial as canceling the Keystone pipeline — indicate that they intend to make the problem worse.
If he were serious about the problem, Mr. Biden — or whoever is president nowadays — would clearly and directly reject notions of net zero, let go of the fantasy of banning gasoline-powered cars, and cease the jihad against oil and gas being waged by its own financial regulators.
The chances of all that happening are zero.
Mr. Biden and his crew want high gas prices. Those prices serve their purposes. All of the hand-waving and hand-wringing about oil companies and their profits, and all of the show associated with draining pretty much all of our strategic reserves, is a dangerous charade.
Conservatives are the Biggest threat to Democracy, according to Biden.
Visits: 41
“Dammit, vote Democrat or we’ll burn the country down!”
When CNN Fact checks Xiden and calls BS, you KNOW he’s in trouble.
President Joe Biden has been back on the campaign trail, traveling in October and early November to deliver his pitch for electing Democrats in the midterm elections on Tuesday.
Biden’s pitch has included claims that are false, misleading or lacking important context. (As always, we take no position on the accuracy of his subjective arguments.) Here is a fact-check look at nine of his recent statements.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Social Security, part 1
Biden said at a Democratic fundraiser in Pennsylvania last week: “On our watch, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are going to get the biggest increase in their Social Security checks they’ve gotten.” He has also touted the 2023 increase in Social Security payments at other recent events.
The White House deleted a Tuesday tweet that delivered an especially triumphant version of Biden’s boast, and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre acknowledged Wednesday that the tweet was lacking “context.”
That now-deleted Tuesday tweet reads: “Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden’s leadership.”
Biden said at a Democratic rally in Florida on Tuesday: “And on my watch, for the first time in 10 years, seniors are getting an increase in their Social Security checks.”
The claim that the 2023 increase to Social Security payments is the first in 10 years is false. In reality, there has been a cost-of-living increase every year from 2017 onward. There was also an increase every year from 2012 through 2015 before the payment level was kept flat in 2016 because of a lack of inflation.
The context around this Biden remark in Florida suggests he might have botched his repeat campaign line about Social Security payments increasing at the same time asMedicare premiums are declining.
Regardless of his intentions, though, he was wrong.
A new corporate tax
Biden repeatedly suggested in speeches in October and early November that a new law he signed in August, the Inflation Reduction Act, will stop the practice of successful corporations paying no federal corporate income tax. Biden made the claim explicitly in a tweet last week: “Let me give you the facts. In 2020, 55 corporations made $40 billion. And they paid zero in federal taxes. My Inflation Reduction Act puts an end to this.”
But “puts an end to this” is an exaggeration. The Inflation Reduction Act will reduce the number of companies on the list of non-payers, but the law will not eliminate the list entirely.
That’s because the law’s new 15% alternative corporate minimum tax, on the “book income” companies report to investors, only applies to companies with at least $1 billion in average annual income. (There are lots of nuances; you can read more specifics here.) According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the think tank that in 2021 published the list of 55 large and profitable companies that avoided paying any federal income tax in their previous fiscal year, only 14 of these 55 companies reported having US pre-tax income of at least $1 billion in that year.
In other words, there will clearly still be some large and profitable corporations paying no federal income tax even after the minimum tax takes effect in 2023. The exact number is not yet known.
Matthew Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said in a Thursday email that the new tax is “an important step forward from the status quo” and that it will raise substantial revenue, but he also said: “I wouldn’t want to assert that the minimum tax will end the phenomenon of zero-tax profitable corporations. A more accurate phrasing would be to say that the minimum tax will *help* ensure that *the most profitable* corporations pay at least some federal income tax.”
The debt and the deficit
Biden said at the Tuesday rally in Florida: “Look, you know, you can hear it from Republicans, ‘My God, that big-spending Democrat Biden. Man, he’s taken us in debt.’ Well, guess what? I reduced the federal deficit this year by $1 trillion $400 billion. One trillion 400 billion dollars. The most in all American history. No one has ever reduced the debt that much. We cut the federal debt in half.”
Biden offered a similar narrative at a Thursday rally in New Mexico, this time saying, “We cut the federal debt in half. A fact.”
There are two significant problems here.
First: Biden conflated the debt and the deficit, which are two different things. It’s not true that Biden has “cut the federal debt in half”; the federal debt (total borrowing plus interest owed) has continued to rise under Biden, exceeding $31 trillion for the first time this October. Rather, it’s the federal deficit – the annual difference between spending and revenue – that was cut in half between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2022.
Second, it’s highly questionable how much credit Biden deserves for even the reduction in the deficit. Biden doesn’t mention that the primary reason the deficit plummeted in fiscal years 2021 and 2022 was that it had skyrocketed to a record high in 2020 because of emergency pandemic relief spending. It then fell as expected as the spending expired as planned.
“On net, the policies of the administration have increased the deficit, not reduced it.”
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, says the administration’s own actions have significantly worsened the deficit picture. (David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Funds, told Egan that the Biden administration does deserve credit for the economic recovery that has boosted tax revenues.)
The unemployment rate
Biden said at the Florida rally on Tuesday: “Unemployment is down from 6.5 to 3.5%, the lowest in 50 years.” He said at the New Mexico rally on Thursday: “Unemployment rate is 3.5% – the lowest it’s been in 50 years.”
But Biden didn’t acknowledge that September’s 3.5% unemployment rate was actually a tie for the lowest in 50 years – a tie, specifically, with three months of Trump’s administration, in late 2019 and early 2020. Since Biden uses these campaign speeches to favorably compare his own record to Trump’s record, that omission is significant.
The unemployment rate rose to 3.7% in October; that number was revealed on Friday, after these Biden comments. The rate was 6.4% in January 2021, the month Biden took office.
Biden’s student debt policy
During an on-camera discussion conducted by progressive organization NowThis News and published online in late October, Biden told young activists that they “probably are aware, I just signed a law” on student debt forgiveness that is being challenged by Republicans. He added: “It’s passed. I got it passed by a vote or two, and it’s in effect.”
Biden’s claims are false.
He created his student debt forgiveness initiative through executive action, not through legislation, so he didn’t sign a law and didn’t get it passed by any margin. Since Republicans opposed to the initiative, including those challenging the initiative in court, have called it unlawful precisely because it wasn’t passed by Congress, the distinction between a law and an executive action is a highly pertinent fact here.
A White House official told CNN that Biden was referring to the Inflation Reduction Act, the law narrowly passed by the Senate in August; the official said the Inflation Reduction Act created “room for other crucial programs” by bringing down the deficit. But Biden certainly did not make it clear that he was talking about anything other than the student debt initiative.
Gas prices
Biden correctly noted on various occasions in October that gas prices have declined substantially since their June 2022 peak – though, as always, it’s important to note that presidents have a limited impact on gas prices. But in an economic speech in New York last week, Biden said, “Today, the most common price of gas in America is $3.39 – down from over $5 when I took office.”
The most common price for a gallon of regular gas on the day Biden was inaugurated, January 20, 2021, was $2.39 — less than half the price Biden was claiming.
Biden’s claim that the most common gas price when he took office was more than $5 is not even close to accurate. The most common price for a gallon of regular gas on the day he was inaugurated, January 20, 2021, was $2.39, according to data provided to CNN by Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy. In other words, Biden made it sound like gas prices had fallen significantly during his presidency when they had actually increased significantly.
In other recent remarks, Biden has discussed the state of gas prices in relation to the summer peak of more than $5 per gallon, not in relation to when he took office. Regardless, the comment last week was the second this fall in which Biden inaccurately described the price of gas – both times in a way that made it sound more impressive.
Biden has revived a claim that was debunked more than 20 months ago by The Washington Post and then CNN. At least twice in October, he boasted that he traveled 17,000 miles with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
“I’ve spent more time with Xi Jinping of China than any world leader has, when I was Vice President all the way through to now. Over 78 hours with him alone. Eight – nine of those hours on the phone and the others in person, traveling 17,000 miles with him around the world, in China and the United States,” he told a Democratic gathering in Oregon in mid-October.
Biden made the number even bigger during a speech on student debt in New Mexico on Thursday, saying, “I traveled 17-, 18,000 miles with him.”
The claim is false. Biden has not traveled anywhere close to 17,000 miles with Xi, though they have indeed spent lots of time together. Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler noted in 2021 that the two men often did not even travel parallel routes to their gatherings, let alone physically travel together. The only apparent way to get Biden’s mileage past 17,000, Kessler found, is to add the length of his flight journeys between Washington and Beijing, during which, obviously, Xi was not with him.
A White House official told CNN in early 2021 that Biden was adding up his “total travel back and forth” for meetings with Xi. But that is very different than traveling “with” Xi as Biden keeps saying, especially in the context of a boast about how well he knows Xi – and Biden has had more than enough time to make his language more precise.
The Trump tax cuts
Biden claimed at the Thursday rally in New Mexico that under Trump, Republicans passed a $2 trillion tax cut that “affected only the top 1% of the American public.”
Biden correctly said in various October remarks that the Trump tax cut law was particularly beneficial to the wealthy, but he went too far here. It’s not true that the Trump policy “only” affected the top 1%.
The Tax Policy Center think tank found in early 2018 that Trump’s law “will reduce individual income taxes on average for all income groups and in all states.” The think tank estimated that “between 60 and 76 percent of taxpayers in every state will receive a tax cut.”
And in April 2019, tax-preparation company H&R Block said two-thirds of its returning customers had indeed paid less in tax that year than they did the year prior, The New York Times reported in an article headlined “Face It: You (Probably) Got a Tax Cut.”
The Tax Policy Center did find in early 2018 that people at the top would get by far the biggest benefits from Trump’s law. Specifically, the think tank found that the top 1% of earners would get an average 3.4% increase in after-tax 2018 income – versus an average 1.6% income increase for people in the middle quintile, an average 1.2% income increase for people in the quintile below that and just an average 0.4% income increase for people in the lowest quintile.
The think tank also found that the top 1% of earners would get more than 20% of the income benefits from the law, a bigger share than the bottom 60% of earners combined.
The distribution could get even more skewed after 2025, when the law’s individual tax cuts will expire if not extended by Congress and the president. If there is no extension – and, therefore, the law’s permanent corporate tax cut remains in place without the individual tax cuts – the Tax Policy Center has estimated that, in 2027, the top 1% will get 83% of the benefits from the law.
But that’s a possibility about the future. Biden claimed, in the past tense, that the law “affected” only the top 1%.
That’s inaccurate.
This wasn’t the first time Biden overstated his point about the Trump tax cuts. The Washington Post fact-checked him in 2019, for example, when he claimed “all of it” went to the ultra-rich and corporations.
Apparently the rank-and-file Democrats are realizing the Xiden regime is not doing them any favors, despite their promises.
Here’s a just-released addition that shows how deep in the doo-doo Biden and the Democratic Party are:
154
