Reagan Economist Takes Down President's Claims About Bidenomics by the Numbers
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.
The landmark Biden policy was the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which the president signed into law in mid-March 2021, Kudlow pointed out.
“After Joe Biden’s $2 trillion American Rescue Plan, which was his landmark policy, a 6.5 percent economy delivered by Donald Trump sputtered to a 1 percent growth rate in Biden’s first full year, 2022 and early 2023,” he said.
“And after Trump hand-delivered a 1.4 percent inflation rate, under Bidenomics, it soared to a 9 percent inflation rate, which destroyed family affordability and worker income,” the Fox Business host said.
The overall GDP growth rate for 2021 was 5.9 percent.
However, the annual growth decreased to 1.6 percent in the first quarter of 2022 and 0.9 percent the following quarter, while inflation peaked at 9.1 percent in June 2022.
Now that Republicans have taken over the House and the Bidenomics spending frenzy has been curtailed, inflation is back down to 4 percent, which is still much higher than it was under Trump.
This is Bidenomics, folks. pic.twitter.com/Y4iG14dn83
— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) June 28, 2023
The New York Post reported in April that real wages under Biden had declined every month since April 2021 following passage of the American Rescue Plan as inflation outstripped wage increases.
Kudlow compared Biden’s policies to Reagan’s supply-side approach, which Biden dismissed as trickle-down economics.
“Joe Biden may be attacking Reaganomics, but think of this: After Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts went into place in 1983, the economy grew at 6 percent at an annual rate for the next two years,” he said. “Not 1 percent. Six percent.
“And then after a second round of tax cuts in 1986, the economy grew at a 5 percent annual rate for the entire seven-year period of his presidency from 1982 to 1989.”
The Reagan Foundation chronicled that the net worth of families earning between $20,000 and $50,000 annually rose by 27 percent and inflation dropped from 13.5 percent in 1980 to 4.1 percent in 1988, Reagan’s last year in office.
Reagan economist Art Laffer summarized it all concerning economic policy choices on Kudlow’s show Wednesday.
“Reagan healed the sick and Biden has infected the healthy,” he said.
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