Watch Live: President Biden Attempts To Explain ‘Bidenomics’

In the run-up to this morning’s address, The White House has been fact-checked by the Twitterati and several mainstream media organizations in their claims of success. But, putting aside all the talking points being spewed – and defended – the public remains deeply skeptical of President Biden’s economic record.

The claims begin with jobs-jobs-jobs as President Biden proudly proclaims his administration has “created more jobs in two years than any previous administration.”

Twitter’s Community Notes addressed this mal-information by providing the context that this ‘creation’ is merely ‘allowing’ people to go back to work after the government locked them out of their jobs…

If you are a visual learner, this chart should help – does that look like ‘job creation’ or a return to pre-COVID norms enabled by President Trump?

Then there’s inflation.

Based on CPI, the cost of living rose 8% during President Trump’s 4 year term (1.94% per year). In his first two and a half years, President Biden has overseen the cost of living for Americans rise almost 16% (a stunning 6.25% per year on an annualized basis).

And while we continue to hear about ‘real’ wages rising, the fact is – based on BLS data – there is no evidence at all of rising real wages as Americans have seen their increased cost of living outpacing their wage gains on a YoY basis for 26 straight months…

But before we move to the main event, here’s none other than The Wall Street Journal’s Greg Ip to pour a little col reality sauce on the utopian propaganda you’re about to experience:

“Bidenomics,” is a vision intended to “grow the middle class” and build stuff such as roads and factories. This doesn’t tell us much about what distinguishes Biden from other presidents, though. Don’t they all claim to want a stronger middle class and more roads and factories?

His early agenda was also not particularly novel.

The Rescue Plan was old-fashioned Keynesian demand stimulus, notable mostly for its sheer size. Biden’s staff designed it with the economy of 2009 in mind, when newly elected President Barack Obama and Biden, his vice president, faced a deep recession to be followed by a sluggish, yearslong recovery.

Biden’s team is still sticking to that narrative. In a memo released this week, his political strategists Anita Dunn and Mike Donilon write that Biden “faced an immediate economic crisis when he took office.”

Actually, he didn’t.

By January 2021, the economic crisis brought on by Covid-19 was largely over, even if the health crisis wasn’t. As lockdowns were lifted and vaccines approved, businesses were furiously rehiring. Payroll growth averaged 800,000 a month over the last six months of 2020, in percentage terms the strongest such streak preceding a new president’s inauguration since 1952.

The American Rescue Plan, in other words, was designed to bolster demand in an economy that already had plenty.

But it’s logically inconsistent for Biden to disown inflation while taking credit for tight labor markets since they are mirror images of the same thing: an overheated economy. While economists debate how much stimulus contributed to this overheating, they agree it played a part. Voters are thus less inclined to give Biden a pass, especially since Republicans, and even some Democrats, keep reminding them of the connection.

Simply put: taking credit for everything good and none of the bad is more than a bit disingenuous – but that is where we are and don’t expect the MSM to question the narrative they are fed.

Watch the President live here (due to start at 1300ET):

Appendix: just for fun…

Biden’s unemployment rate is worse than Putin’s.