More Biden ‘Accomplishments’ Letters to the EDITOR

Re: Lois Eisenberg, letters, Jan. 20.

Lois, Lois, Lois … your letter to the editor had me laughing so hard, tears were running down my cheeks. In Larry Moore’s rebuttal (Jan. 23) he pointed out that the liberal news networks you cite as sources for Biden Administration accomplishments is like getting the information directly from the Democratic National Committee.

Larry missed one thing: You also cite www.whitehouse.gov as a creditable source for Biden’s accomplishments. This really gave me a good belly laugh. While some of the information provided by the White House may be truthful, regardless of the president being a Republican or Democrat, it should be treated as propaganda. Maybe some of the information is true, but the reader should take it with a grain of salt.

Lois, you overlooked some of President Joe Biden’s most important “accomplishments”:

• Gasoline Prices: When President Biden took office in January 2021, the U.S. was energy-independent and the national average retail price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $2.334. He immediately invoked anti-fossil fuel policies that caused oil prices to spike and the gasoline price jumped to $2.501 in February, 2021, peaking at $4.929 in June, 2022. In December, 2023 the average national price was $3.134, about 34.3% higher than when he took office. The high cost of gasoline/diesel has a dramatic effect on the prices consumers pay for goods because over 70% of products use fossil fuels in the manufacturing process and/ or in the products themselves. Most everything we consume is trucked somewhere in the supply chain, thus prices paid by consumers go up, which leads me to Biden’s next “accomplishment.”

• Inflation: In January 2021, inflation was running at a paltry 1.4%, well below the Federal Reserve’s 2% target rate. The substantial spike in gasoline/ diesel prices and out-of-control spending by Congress and the Biden Administration contributed to the Consumer Price Index jumping 16.9% since Biden took office, which leads me to Biden’s next two “accomplishments.”

• Interest Rates: In an effort to get inflation under control, over the past three years the Federal Reserve increased interest rates, thus mortgage rates jumped from about 3.1% when Biden took office to a peak in 2023 of a little over 7%. Interest rates have also significantly jumped on car loans and unsecured loans.

• Real Wages: The average annual wage or salary income of working Americans has declined by $2,500 after inflation, or 3.2%, since Biden took office, compared to inflation-adjusted gains for the comparable period under Donald Trump of about $2,450 or 4.1%.

• Chaos on the Southern Border: Our southern border was fairly secure when President Trump left office. There were only 32,853 apprehensions in December 2020. Since President Biden took office, approximately 7-8 million immigrants have crossed the southern border, with a record 276,000 apprehensions in December 2023. Let’s put that in perspective: The total population of Iowa is 3.2 million. So approximately 2.5 times the population of Iowa has entered the U.S. through the southern border since Biden was sworn in. About 95% of persons apprehended are released into the United States under a notice to appear before an immigration judge. The system is so backlogged that the dates to appear now stretch to 2031. The vast majority never show up for their hearing. Fentanyl and other deadly drugs are pouring in through the southern border, killing approximately 100,000 persons a year. The cost to provide food, housing and services for these migrants is shattering the budgets of cities, counties and states across the country, causing Democrat and Republican officials to beg the Biden Administration for money to offset these costs. I am not anti-immigrant. Heck, my grandparents immigrated legally to the U.S. in 1915-16 as refugees of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks.

What is going on now at our southern border is a slap in the face to every person who has legally immigrated to our country.

Charles Yacoobian

Valencia

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