Biden’s track record keeps on getting better
Biden’s economic policies have reduced inflation while creating 15.6 million jobs and 57,000 projects to repair aging infrastructure; returning or increasing manufacturing in 600 U.S. towns; and lowering the violent crime rate. It’s raised the national debt by half of what it’s rising because of Trump.
Biden will eliminate Trump’s tax breaks for those making more than $400,000 a year. Biden’s 57,000 rebuilding projects are accomplishing what Trump could not. So, contrary to Trump’s repeated fib claiming Biden is “destroying America,” Biden is actually Making America Great Again—not Trump.
The major cause of inflation is not necessarily an increase in money supply from Biden’s legislation. That’s the Harvard Business Review finding. It evaluates several inflationary factors, concluding no one knows the cause for sure.
When we encountered the 2020 pandemic, Trump was president and inflation was 2.5%. It dropped to almost zero by May, because, as Biden was cogent enough to acknowledge, the economy shut down.
With seven months remaining in Trump’s term, (May of 2020), Inflation (CPI-U, 12-month adjusted average) started to rise again, reaching 1.4% by January 2021, when Biden took office. Inflation then rose to 7% during Biden’s first 10 months until November 15, 2021, when Biden signed the Infrastructure & Jobs Act with support from only 13 Republicans. So, while most of the inflation (5.6%) occurred during Biden’s first year, the data does not support Trump’s blaming because the bipartisan Infrastructure/Jobs Act, passed after most of the inflation increase. Thus, Biden’s legislation could not have fueled 5.6% of the rise.
The ensuing six-month Biden economy added 2.1% to inflation, peaking (in June 2022) at 9.1% just two months before mid-August, 2022, when Biden signed the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) to support businesses, local, county and state governments, tribes, rural electric cooperatives, churches, and other non-profits and homeowners’ associations. The IRA is still helping cut their electricity bills by financing no-fuel-cost electricity from the sun and wind. No Republican voted for the IRA and still advocate its repeal.
Inflation was at 7% when Biden signed the Infrastructure/Jobs Act, and despite the subsequent peak and passage of the IRA, inflation was back down to 6.5% by December 2022, only four months after Biden’s IRA became law. So, no Biden bill has pumped enough money into our economy to sustain an increase in inflation. The Jobs Act minimally affected inflation for a brief time, and IRA spending occurred when inflation became lower by a lot.
The 12 month inflation average went down from 9.1% two months before the August 2022 IRA to 3% in June 2023. For 18 of the months since, inflation has averaged below 3.5%. It was 3.3% in May 2024. The May monthly figure (not the 3.3% yearly average) was zero. Since inflation is cooling, the Federal Reserve should lower rates soon. Biden mentioned sixteen Nobel Laureate economists who have indicated Trump’s proposed tariffs will rekindle inflation.
Unemployment comparison
As Biden said, unemployment increased because of Covid-19. However, unemployment had receded to 6.4% by late January 2021 when Biden took office. Ten months later, it had fallen to under 4% and remained there until it was 4% in May 2024. Thus, so far Biden’s economy has had 25 months of an unemployment rate under 4%. That is 139% better than Trump’s full term numbers.
Biden has created 3.2 times more “non-Covid bounceback” jobs than were shaped during the last three Republican presidencies combined. Yet Trump falsely debated, “The only jobs he [Biden} created are for illegal immigrants and bounce back jobs; they’re bounced back from the Covid.”
By the time Trump left office in January 2021, employment had partly rebounded, but was still 9.4 million jobs below the February 2020 peak. [ii] So, while part of Biden’s 15.6 jobs-created number resulted from replacing jobs lost during Covid, 6.2 million of those jobs were not bounce backs. And total nonfarm employment is higher than it was before the pandemic, as is the employment level of native-born workers.[iii]
Biden policies have brought back or expanded clean energy manufacturing facilities to 500–600 US communities [iv] Under Joe, private companies have announced $650 billion in US clean energy and other technology investments, providing $400 billion for clean energy in “communities that have been left behind.”[v]
Republicans condemning spending have nevertheless accepted the funding.[151] Those payouts favor Republican congressional districts, indicating Joe’s balanced approach to bringing us together.[vi] Montana, for example, is getting three times more per capita than Colorado. Only North Dakota and Alaska get more per capita than Montana.[vii]
So, I’m hoping we’ll tune our own synapses to remember the many truths Joe articulated while facing Trump’s disorienting (gish gallop) blizzard of unfathomable lies.
Russ Doty is a former Montana Democratic legislator from Great Falls now retired in Greeley, Colorado who writes occasionally. As a lawyer, he represented clients in Colorado, Montana, and Minnesota energy matters. His free substack to help churches and non-profits obtain IRA direct payments is https://russdoty.substack.com .