By In 1988, during the Republican National Convention, then Vice President George HW Bush, the GOP nominee for president, declared a fateful line that would haunt him four years later: “Read my lips, no new taxes.”
As the world experienced change with the fall of the USSR and war broke out in the Middle East, President Bush found it difficult to keep his word. The figures presented by the Bush campaign were predicated on the belief that the robust economic growth of the late 1980s would persist during his tenure as president.
It didn’t and HW went on to be a one-term president, losing to Bill Clinton in 1992 who ran on the notion that “It’s the economy, stupid!”
Fast forward thirty years and it looks like another way to say “Read my lips” is to mumble about “Bidenomics.” The White House was proud of their work on the economy so much that they slapped the president’s name on it, expecting prices to go down, but the opposite has happened.
The Financial Times reported that “inflation was higher than forecast in September, raising the prospect that the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates following similarly robust recent data on the strength of the jobs market.
The consumer price index rose 3.7 percent year on year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the same pace as the previous month. Economists had expected a slight decline.”
Persistent inflation and Biden’s embrace of it has made some Democrats desperate for a change in direction.
Several top Biden allies have privately raised concerns about the phrase to the White House, according to two people familiar with the backchanneling, according to Politico.
And Rep. Steven Horsford, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, said in an interview this week that he’s warned the White House that the Bidenomics brand is built on shaky ground. He believes it advances a message that wrongly centers the conversation on the president and his electoral ambitions rather than the voters who stand to gain from the administration’s economic accomplishments.
“With all due respect to the president, to the White House, this is not so much about them as it is the people who are benefiting by the policies that they came out and demanded,” said Horsford (D-Nev.). “We have to do a better job framing this not so much for one person — for the office of the presidency — but for the people.”
Their worries are underscored by a slew of polling showing that the economic recovery the White House has sought to spotlight as a triumph is not making a dent in the public’s psyche. Most Americans are still skeptical the U.S. is in an upturn, let alone one resilient enough to last much longer. The rising cost of living remains a dominant theme in voters’ minds, crowding out major gains in jobs and wages. And so far, the Bidenomics drumbeat that began earlier this summer has yet to prove it can change their minds.
“At this point, Bidenomics doesn’t really have strong answers to people’s biggest worries,” said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank. “There ought to be a lot of thinking in the White House now about changes in the way they present their case for the economic good that this administration has done.”
The growing concern among Democrats is being bolstered by reality, regardless of White House spin.
Steve Forbes took to Fox News recently and explained how “Bidenomics” is a disaster for Democrats. “The White House has the insulting and infuriating habit of thinking it can spin reality with the American people. If it’s raining, insist the sun is shining! The prime example is the president and his acolytes declaring that life under Bidenomics is good and getting better.
Of course, that’s a loser’s bet, unless they can prevent people from going to the grocery store and the gas pump, stop them from opening their utility bills or buying a car or securing a mortgage or seeking medical care. No wonder Biden’s approval ratings on the economy continue to tank.
Another example is the obscenely misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), whose unhinged spending fueled inflationary fires rather than quenching them. Turns out this bill was loaded with climate tax credits and cash outlays that are rewarding politically connected cronies and will end up worsening the environment, not bettering it.”
The worst part, however, he claims, revolves around Biden’s “negotiation” of prescription drugs for Medicare, which Forbes claims “is uniquely dishonest and extremely harmful. It will ultimately hurt the health of everyone, many mortally.”
The White House’s plan is not really a negotiation in the sense that most people consider the term. Rather, it’s a threat to tax companies if they don’t give the federal government what it wants whle taking money out of Medicare.
“Despite routinely proclaiming themselves as guardians of Medicare, its notable that Democrats are now responsible for the only two major cuts to the program in the last 20 years. Taken together, ObamaCare ($729 billion) and the IRA ($280 billion) have diverted over $1 trillion in funds meant for Medicare to unrelated spending programs.
So, in typical fashion, liberals are now seeking to double the number of drugs subject to government price “negotiation” in Medicare and expand their failures into the private insurance market. Doing so could also double the number of new life-saving medicines that don’t come to market, impacting not just seniors but also millions of other chronic and rare disease sufferers who hold out hope for the next breakthrough.”
Come 2024, “Bidenomics” could be an anchor so heavy that even Democrats will want to jump ship. Maybe that’s why we had another round of “Can we replace this guy or what?” articles from liberal newspapers last month.
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