What if Democrats had made the economy even worse?
President Biden likes to blame inflation on the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine — or, as he says, “Putin's price hike.” But the fact is, Biden's own actions, and those of his party, have also contributed significantly to the rise in the cost of living that is making it harder and harder for many Americans to make ends meet. And that rise, in turn, is feeding a terrible pessimism among Americans about the state of the country.
Even some liberal commentators are admitting that Biden and Capitol Democrats fed inflation by passing enormous spending bills, measures that provided far more stimulus to the economy that it needed. That was certainly true of the giant $1.9 “COVID relief” bill called the American Rescue Plan, signed into law by Biden on March 11, 2021. The left-leaning website Vox recently published a story with the headline, “Biden's American Rescue Plan worsened inflation. The question is how much.”
The answer that Vox gave was — a lot. “Inflation has been happening across the world, caused by pandemic-related disruptions and exacerbated this year by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and China's COVID-19 lockdowns,” Vox said. “But regarding the exact amount of inflation, the U.S. stands out. And it started to stand out shortly after President Biden took office. The U.S. did a lot more stimulus than these other countries, and now it's seeing a lot more core inflation.”
“We put gasoline on the fire,” Marc Goldwein of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget told Vox.
“That's basically what the American Rescue Plan did.” Democrats simply did not take the prospect of inflation seriously enough. “The American Rescue Plan wasn't the primary cause of today's inflation,” Vox concluded.
“But if inflation was always going to be a problem, then it's important to avoid policies that could make it a much worse problem.”
The inflation that Biden and his Democratic colleagues have worsened is taking a terrible toll both on the American household budget and the American sense of optimism. In a new NBC News poll, answering the classic right track-wrong track question, 75 percent of respondents said they believe the country is on the wrong track. Just 16 percent said the country is headed in the right direction. That 75 percent is the highest number since the terrible days of the economic collapse in 2008. And the 16 percent is the lowest since the same time.
The situation has sent Biden's job approval rating even lower — 39 percent among all Americans, and 42 percent among registered voters. And there is one big reason why. When NBC asked respondents the most important issue facing the country, a full 40 percent named inflation and jobs and the economy — far and away at the top of the voters' priority list. To give you a comparison, the war in Ukraine placed seventh on the list, and COVID was barely on the list at all. A full 65 percent said their income is not keeping up with rising costs. How could they not be worried?
So there's no doubt things are bad. But it's important to remember that last year Democrats tried very, very hard — indeed, made it the party's top priority — to make things worse. Remember Build Back Better? It was the massive social spending scheme that Biden and the Democratic Party made the centerpiece of their agenda. At times, the proposal was about $3.5 trillion — dwarfing the $1.9 trillion of the American Rescue Plan — even though progressive Democrats wanted it to be much more, closer to $6 trillion. Then it shrank to $2.5 trillion, and then, perhaps, less than that.