Joe Biden may not have the physical stamina to travel overseas and fulfill his duties regarding foreign policy, but he did manage to give public remarks on Friday. In them, the president slammed Americans for blaming him for the current inflation boom, proclaiming he’s “sick of it” and that “it’s just not true” that his policies have exacerbated the problem.
Perhaps getting angry and yelling at people who vote isn’t the best political strategy?
In fact, it is completely true that government spending has largely led to the inflationary pressures nailing American families right now. There’s a reason U.S. inflation has been 2-3 percent higher than European inflation over the last year, depending on which month you compare. Joe Biden and his party pushed through a COVID “relief” bill along partisan lines that extended unemployment, sent out checks, and injected way too much funny money into an already overheated economy.
That’s how you get record inflation. The 7.9 percent number we saw in February was not simply a product of organic demand due to the coronavirus waning. Sure, there was always going to be some inflation, but it was never going to be this high without government intervention. For Biden to now pretend everyone but him is to blame is cowardly and dishonest. This is not “Putin’s price hike.” It’s “Joe Biden’s price hike.”
Never fear, though, Biden brought clips from the New York Times to make his argument.
I don’t know about you, but I’m convinced. If economists like Paul Krugman, a man who has been wrong about nearly every economic issue of the last three decades, says Biden is in the clear, then that’s that.
Seriously, though, doesn’t it feel like the White House’s messaging is starting to crack? They’ve clearly got no real answer to the inflation problem, and instead of at least feigning a solution, they are just doubling down on shouting about Russia and hoping no one notices how much gas was before Ukraine was invaded. At some point, a politician who never takes responsibility for anything just comes across as pathetic, and to be sure, there have been Republicans who have fallen into that trap.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, never admitting blame is not always a winning political strategy, especially when things are objectively bad. Many voters appreciate a leader who says “that didn’t work, we are going to try something else.” But Biden is so stubborn and egomaniacal that he will never do that. He’d rather run the entire country off a cliff than stray from his far-left ideology, and that’s assuming he’s even in control of his own administration.
Case in point? In the same remarks, he decided to also lie about oil production in the United States.
The idea that oil companies just don’t want to pump more and sell more is asinine. Rather, the reason oil companies aren’t rushing to up production is almost solely due to government regulation and interference. It’s not enough to just have the rights to a federal lease (and the profitability of leases vary wildly). The investments needed to put the infrastructure in place to produce more range into the tens of billions. Why would an oil company take that kind of enormous financial risk in the current environment? What happens a year from now when Biden decides, on a whim, to shut down more leases? Or close down more pipelines? Are you starting to see the problem?
That brings me back to my point about Biden being so married to his ideology. Real leadership in this situation would be admitting he was wrong about oil and gas production, and then doing everything possible to incentivize it. That includes long-term guarantees to spurn investment, and fast-tracking the permit processes.
Biden isn’t a real leader, though, so we get what we get, which are skyrocketing gas prices and budget-crushing inflation on goods and services. One can only hope American voters hold him and his party accountable in November.