Must pay attention

For reasons that escape me, Queen Sarah seems to be running what can only be called campaign ads on TV. Maybe it’s because her approval ratings are down. What I find even stranger is that the ad begins with an announcer saying that the Biden presidency has been a disaster. Where do they get that?

While not a proponent of the theory held by many that whatever happens is the president’s doing, things have been going pretty well since Biden took over. Inflation is coming down with a rate lower than the rest of the world, the economy has been growing nicely, employment up sharply. We seem so far to have avoided the recession that many thought was inevitable in the fight against inflation (see Paul Krugman). The debt has grown, attributable largely still to the pandemic, and, I think, shows a lower rate of growth than we saw in the Trump years. Sounds to me like somebody has been doing about as well as one could hope.

The disaster, or multiple disasters, comes from the stunts Republicans are pulling. Since Republicans took the House, we’ve had one potentially catastrophic debt crisis, one barely dodged shutdown, went weeks without a speaker of the House, and then got a really scary election-denier. Much-needed aid to Ukraine and Israel along with border security have gone unfunded. So far, our new speaker’s only proposal is to fund aid to Israel with money cut from the IRS, making it easier for rich tax cheats to hide. (The only consistent Republican goal since 1980 is that rich people should pay less in taxes.)

People in Arkansas who vote knee-jerk for Republicans need to pay attention to who is looking out for their interests and who clearly is not.

ROGER A. WEBB Little Rock