Biden’s State of The Union - a tale of two cities: The Democratic Party coalition and everyone else
The administrative state is bigger and more powerful than ever. Wealthy elites and political constituents benefit while the middle class, working poor, and retirees face increasing hardships.
President Biden told a lot of whoppers during his State of the Union address. In his agitated hyped-up state, he spewed so many half-truths, exaggerations, and bald-faced lies it was hard to keep up. He lied 30 times, according to The Federalist, an American online magazine.
The liberal media (e.g., CNN, MSNBC) were pleased he didn’t fumble or slur his words. They focused on his “strong” and “forceful” performance but ignored the issues that matter most to working families and low-income earners: the crises at the border, soaring inflation, fentanyl deaths, crime, homelessness, and kitchen table issues about how families can afford higher energy costs, food, and housing. Mass illegal immigration is crushing city budgets and social services. It also represents a serious security threat to our country and the safety of our citizens.
Biden falsely smears corporations and the wealthy as greedy and undertaxed—not paying their fair share—and proposes a new radical wealth tax.
A few of Biden’s more outlandish claims that are verifiably false:
Biden: “We are bringing down prices across the board.”
Fact: The cost of living is up 18.6% (Feb) and still climbing, albeit at a lower rate of increase in inflation.
Biden: “Wages are up after being adjusted for inflation.”
Fact: Inflation-adjusted hourly wages have declined over three straight years. Biden brags about recent increases but those increases have been offset by a decrease in the average workweek. Since January 2021, real weekly earnings have shrunk 4.4% over his three years in office, even as they have trended above inflation recently.
Biden: “My economic plan is working. I’ve already cut the federal deficit by over one trillion dollars.”
Fact: The national debt was $27.8 trillion when Biden took office; it’s more than $34.2 trillion today—$6.4 trillion (23%) higher. The Congressional Budget Office projects that $2 trillion-plus deficits will soon be the norm. Combined with higher interest rates caused by inflation, American taxpayers last year paid more for interest on the national debt ($879 billion) than defense. In ten years, CBO projects 38 cents of every income tax dollar will go toward interest on the debt.
Biden: “We’re reducing the cost of people being able to meet their basic needs.”
Fact: Under Bidenomics, it costs more to drive, work, and heat/cool your home. Since Biden has been in office, home heating oil is up 44%, gasoline is up 33%, and electricity and natural gas are both up 29%. Instead of working to bring oil and gas prices down, the President’s energy policies have one goal: to promote a growth-killing climate agenda while tying our energy production to estimates of greenhouse gas emissions.
Biden: “Consumers are victims of corporate greed and price gouging.” His evidence of that greed, and the reason for inflation, is …using ’shrinkflation’ to rip off consumers.
Fact: Biden’s ‘shrinkflation’ smear does not represent corporate greed; it highlights the destructive power of inflation. Inflation has forced companies to raise prices because input costs have soared. Mars Inc. said the president’s claim about its Snickers bar was completely bogus. Biden shifts blame to gin up support for higher taxes.
Biden: “1000 billionaires pay only an 8.2% tax rate.”
Fact: The White House calculation is radically different from how taxes are typically defined, where income taxes are the numerator and income is the denominator. Biden would redefine income—a theoretical proposal—to include unrealized capital gains and then impose taxes on them. He demagogues the issue for purely political purposes and makes up a new calculation to derive a false tax rate for the wealthy. The purpose of this sleight-of-hand and non-traditional calculation is to justify—i.e., build political support—a new wealth tax. If successful, the Democrats will not stop at the billionaire class. Taxing wealth was calculated by White House economists, which estimated that the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in America paid an average of just 8.2 percent of their income—including unrealized capital gains on stocks—in Federal individual income taxes between 2010 and 2018.
Fact: IRS data from 2019 shows that the top 1% of taxpayers paid an average federal income tax rate of 25.6%. A more elite group, the top 0.001% — which in 2019 meant people earning about $60 million or more a year — paid 22.9%.
Biden cannot run on his economic or foreign policies.
During the speech Biden pandered to his party’s liberal base—progressives—while insulting Republicans and demonizing his political rival, Donald Trump. He even threatened the Supreme Court Justices. His objective was to shore up his liberal base, not unite the country or reach across the aisle. Biden campaigned as a moderate, but his speech and many unconstitutional executive orders provide evidence that he has lurched left. After the speech, Mitch McConnell accused President Biden of “false advertising” during his campaign, saying Americans “elected a president who preached moderation.” Biden lectures on unity and then gives the most partisan speech.
Biden is pursuing a more liberal agenda than that of Obama and has successfully advanced a big government agenda that has moved the country toward socialism. It’s a transformation of America, if not reversed, from a free-market capitalist economy into a bloated and bankrupt authoritarian welfare state. His de facto open border policies have resulted in a least 10.5 million illegal immigrants entering the country. The not-so-secret object is that new democratic party voters will help the Democrat Party maintain and retain political power.
FBI Director Christopher Wray told senators on Monday that there are “very dangerous threats” coming from the U.S.-Mexico border, including a smuggling network with "ISIS ties." Wray continued: “From an FBI perspective, we are seeing a wide array of very dangerous threats that emanate from the border. And that includes everything from drug trafficking — the FBI alone seized enough fentanyl in the last two years to kill 270 million people — that’s just on the fentanyl side.”
“An awful lot of the violent crime in the United States is at the hands of gangs who are themselves involved in the distribution of that fentanyl,” he added.
Stimulus checks and social spending buy votes, which is the playbook of Biden and his party. Spending, taxing, and electioneering is the strategy. Bidenomics is, in essence, a massive transformation in the size and scope of government. The daily struggle of millions of families trying to make their hopes, dreams, and household budgets work is far more difficult because of Biden’s policies.
Biden and the Democrats have driven the largest expansion of government and social spending in over 50 years. He justifies the $6.2 trillion in federal spending in the name of social justice. His administration hires are not based on merit but on race, gender, and a woke ideology. Meritocracy has been replaced with mediocracy and an even more bloated bureaucracy—the administrative state.
The Green New Deal is an American-style cultural revolution.
The progressive wing of the Democratic Party has supercharged and transformed how it wins federal action and funding to create new union jobs and direct trillions in government spending. Environmental ‘social justice’ spending is a Trojan horse that delivers federal funds to ‘communities of color’ and ‘indigenous people.’ The irrational fear of climate change is the political cover used to gin up political support for the uninformed, naïve, and dependent poor. Key constituents of the Democratic Party.
President Biden adopted key Green Deal principles and timelines—as well as a pledge for a 100% clean energy economy. This laid the groundwork for the Build Back Better plan and resulted in executive actions designed to phase out fossil fuels. Higher energy costs are the result of those actions.
In his first week in office, President Biden issued executive Order 14008, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, establishing the administration’s Juistice40 initiative. Under Justice40, federal agencies are required to deliver 40% of the overall benefits of covered federal investments to disadvantaged communities. Over 16 federal agencies and over 500 programs must adhere to the requirements of Justice40. This includes the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. The Green New Deal movement won a victory when the Biden administration announced a new American Climate Corps workforce in solidarity with unions.
In the first year of the Inflation Reduction Act, 210 major projects are expected to create 303,500 jobs during construction with another 99,600 jobs created after construction. Resulting in an estimated $156 billion in additional US GDP. Organized labor benefits from these Green New Deal malinvestments, regardless of the increase in deficit spending and debt. The average government employee is 40.5% more expensive to employ than his private sector counterpart, costing over $60 per hour; benefits cost 80.3% more. No competitive bidding is allowed for Biden’s Build Back Better infrastructure and climate projects. Union Power.
Biden is the figurehead leader of the so-called swamp and the administrative state.
Trump wasn’t the first to use the drain-the-swamp mantra. President Reagan invoked it in the 1980s, referring to the need to reduce the size of the government bureaucracy. Biden and the Democrats’ agenda has made the swamp bigger and more powerful than ever. Companies and organizations are willing to spend big bucks in campaign contributions to grab a slice of that multi-trillion-dollar pie.
The Democratic coalition includes government employees, public sector unions, teacher unions, women’s groups, black and Hispanic Americans, LGBT communities, and environmentalists. Currently, 56% of Democrats are white, while 21% are black, 18% are Hispanic, and 4% are Asian or Pacific Islander, so says a report by the Survey Center on American Life. The new constituent—over 10 million illegal immigrants.
The surge in government jobs and social assistance jobs is soaring to handle the massive influx of immigrants. Health care jobs are rising for the same reason but also because of demographics. Aging boomers need more assistance. Government jobs account for 21% of all job growth in 2024 and social assistance jobs account for 9.3%. When combined with healthcare jobs, these jobs account for 56% of all jobs created so far this year.
Democrats are counting on illegals being counted on the census to determine the number of congressional seats and electoral votes each state gets. A vote on an amendment barring illegal immigrants from being counted failed in the Senate this week. Democrats’ unanimous opposition to this measure confirms that they’re using illegal aliens and sanctuary cities to increase their political power. Not a single Democrat voted for the amendment.
And let’s not forget the ever-expanding administrative state which has been empowered and emboldened during Obama’s time in office and even more so during Biden’s last three years.
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) sums it up nicely with an article titled How America’s Administrative State Undermines the Constitution:
“Federal agencies outsized roles in public policy have eroded America’s fundamental ideals of limited government. Our Founding Fathers understood that power and authority vested in one body is the very definition of tyranny. The U.S. Constitution’s system of separated powers safeguards individual liberties by dividing legislative, executive, and judicial authority across three coequal branches, ensuring that no one branch can exert absolute rule.
“Unelected bureaucrats have replaced politicians in determining broad-ranging regulations, free from democratic oversight or political interference. Over time, a complete lack of accountability from the courts and further enablement by Congress have allowed federal entities with “quasi-legislative” and “quasi-judicial” powers to subvert constitutional principles and exert inordinate influence in the lives of citizens with minimal recourse.”
Massive federal spending inflates GDP growth and debt.
During and after the pandemic, government spending exploded. Federal spending that had averaged 20.5% of GDP since 1982 ballooned to 60.5% of GDP for the two years of 2020-21 — an extra 20% of GDP. President Biden enacted $6.2 trillion of new 10-year spending on top of the $4.8 trillion in 2021 spending projected before the pandemic hit. Biden wants to spend $7.2 trillion more. The current $34 trillion of debt is expected to increase an additional $22 trillion over the next 10 years.
By any measure, the impact of Biden’s policies is contested, with claims that they primarily benefit the Democratic Party coalition rather than the average American working family. This exacerbates existing inequalities, with the rich getting richer while everyone else face economic challenges.
The eventual consequences of unsustainable debt and deficit spending include reduced economic growth, increased unemployment, and declines in asset prices, such as stocks and homes. The resulting negative wealth effect disproportionately affects low-income earners and retirees relying on fixed incomes, exacerbating their financial struggles.
The situation evokes parallels to Charles Dickens’s depiction of a stark divide between prosperity and struggle in A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
Biden’s presidency is similarly marked by contrasting experiences for different demographics, with wealthy elites and political constituents benefiting while the middle class, working poor, and retirees face increasing hardships.
Ultimately, individuals must assess their own circumstances and determine whether they are better off under Bidenomics. Addressing the challenges posed by rising debt and socioeconomic disparities requires concerted efforts to ensure shared prosperity for all Americans – which is the “far, far better thing.”
Unfortunately, for most Americans, the economic tumbrils await.