Joe Biden’s Excuse for the Horrible Jobs Report Is Ridiculous and Insulting By Stacey Lennox
The wisdom of putting Joe Biden behind a podium more frequently in the wake of the disaster in Afghanistan is questionable. Yet, following the disastrous August jobs report, he ambled out to explain why the projections were off by a factor of three. Today he was mumbling Joe rather than petulant Joe. A slew of recent polling indicates Americans are feeling less safe, less secure, and less prosperous.
Predictably, these sentiments have cause Biden’s approval ratings to crater. While his handling of COVID-19 propped him up above 50% overall approval for most of the summer, polling shows even his marks on the pandemic are sliding. In Rasmussen’s daily Presidential Tracking Poll, his Approval Index dipped to -21 on August 24 and has remained at least -20 heading into the Labor Day holiday. There is speculation that it could be a durable decline rather than a blip.
Incredibly, Biden opened his remarks by saying, “As we head into Labor Day weekend, we have more evidence of the progress of our economy from last year’s economic calamity.” Someone needs to tell him the baseline is February of 2020. No one gets credit for reopening an economy artificially shut down by the government. Employees returning to their jobs and closed businesses reopening is not economic growth. And frankly, even those two things are not happening fast enough.
The only reason the economy did not completely collapse is because the economic fundamentals were strong. By continuing to blow out spending, the Biden administration is eroding the foundations of the U.S.’s economic strength going into the pandemic. Still, mumbly Joe wants us to celebrate 235,000 new jobs when over 700,000 were forecasted. Employers are not going to create many jobs when there are already more than 10 million open nationwide.
The unemployment rate fell to 5.2%. I hate to tell the president this, but to get back to even, it needs to hit 3.5% as it was in February of 2020. Biden wants you to know it is the lowest it has been in 18 months. How underwhelming. That coincides perfectly with the engineered recession brought on by COVID. Black Americans lost ground under Biden in August. Unemployment for blacks shot up from 8.2% to 8.8%. Under President Trump, it was at 4.5% pre-pandemic.
Related: There’s Good Economic News, But It’s Mostly from Republican-Run States
Biden tries to take credit for adding an average of 750,000 jobs per month for the last three months. These are not new jobs. Most are simply the same jobs people had before the pandemic. Talking about his administration’s record “job creation” is just gag-worthy to people who know better. His constant comparisons to 2020 are meant for stupid people. An empty suit could have created jobs when the shuttered blue states reopened after Biden won. Oh wait, one did.
Biden then blamed the jobs report on the Delta variant surge of COVID-19. This statement is the height of absurdity. Cases started to rise at the beginning of July. The reason employers are not creating more jobs is that they can’t fill the ones they have. The wage gains Biden brags about are artificial because employers are competing with unconditioned welfare and inflated unemployment benefits. Businesses are dealing with additional wage expenses as raw material expenses are rising. This situation is not sustainable, and the labor market will self-correct when the government-funded slush programs do.
The attempt to pivot is blatant. When Biden discussed the Delta variant, he shared that he will be unveiling a new plan next week to get the pandemic under control. Hopefully, Americans will see shortly that the virus is going to do what viruses do. Cases have peaked across much of the southeast, including Florida. They will peak and decline in other regions in a similar way. Just like colds and the flu, COVID will settle into a pattern whether we like it or not. If Biden shut up about shots and started talking about monoclonal antibodies, that would be an enormous help.
Perhaps his team believes returning to “defeating the virus” will turn Americans’ attention away from the fact the Biden administration just got their butt handed to them by a bunch of 8th-century goat herders. Or that under Biden’s orders, we abandoned American citizens in Afghanistan. It is a distinct possibility that this failure could lead to a hostage situation that dwarfs the one that began in 1979. Or that poor planning and a horrible strategy led to the death of 13 U.S. service members with dozens of others injured.
Related: After Losing a War and Stranding Americans in Afghanistan, Biden’s Pentagon Pivots Back to Race
Maybe Americans will forget it is Biden’s fault when the inevitable terror attacks start. Or when Iran gets aggressive with the U.S. military equipment that our new “partners” the Taliban just shipped them. Or, God forbid, if something awful happens on the anniversary of 9/11.
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