President Joe Biden is attempting to rev up his base by claiming his “Bidenomics” policies somehow “fixed” the economy. But few everyday Americans are seeing the benefits he keeps talking about. Indeed, paychecks have taken a serious hit in the Biden era.
Americans are facing a long list of things bleeding away their earning power. The cost of gasoline, food, rent and mortgages, utilities and nearly everything else has soared under this administration.
Biden has made all Americans poorer, but his horrible Bidenomics economy is hitting the poor and middle class very hard.
Overall, the cost of living has risen 16 percent from inflation since Biden took office, Tiana Lowe Doescher noted Thursday in the Washington Examiner. That means Americans have lost 16 percent of their spending power.
“The numbers are even more egregious when you break them down by the categories on which the least privileged spend a disproportionate amount of their incomes,” Doescher wrote.
“The consumer price index specifically for food is up 19% since January 2021, and electricity prices are up 23%,” she said. “Used car prices are up a staggering 30%, and car repairs cost 23% more than two years ago.”
The economic situation is so bad that last week, Fitch Ratings downgraded the country’s credit rating to AA+, down from AAA, an announcement that “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary said was a very bad thing for the U.S.
“There is no way to sugarcoat this at all. It’s bad. And I’ll tell you how you measure it’s bad. Basically, when you downgrade the U.S. economy, which is what this downgrading is, you are losing a little faith in the U.S. dollar and the U.S. Treasury bill,” O’Leary said Tuesday.
The Heritage Foundation also slammed the Biden administration for the downgrade.
“This has been a direct result of the Biden administration spending, borrowing, and printing too much money,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the think tank’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“As the yield on US Treasuries marches higher, the cost to service the debt is exploding,” Antoni said. “The Treasury is spending an annualized $1 trillion according to the latest monthly data from the Fiscal Service. This interest expense adds to the deficit which snowballs into a faster growing debt, which means even more expensive financing costs, higher interest rates, etc.
“That’s a death spiral.”
Peter Earle, an economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, pointed out that the downgrade was only the second in U.S. history, the first being in 2011 when Barack Obama was president.
“For the second time in history, the first having been in August 2011, the credit rating of the issuer of US Treasury bonds, the US government, has been downgraded,” Earle said in a post on Twitter, which has been rebranded as X. “What this means is that there is increasing doubt about the US government’s ability to meet its financial obligations.”
US Treasury Secretary Yellen called the US credit downgrade by Fitch “outdated.” Quite accurate: the current median debt-to-GDP ratio of AAA-rated sovereign debt issuers is currently 39.3%. The last time America’s debt-to-GDP ratio was at that level was between 1978 & 1979.
— Pete Earle (@peter_c_earle) August 2, 2023
Doescher noted that Bidenomics has been a “disaster” for Americans. Rent is up 16 percent, and if one hopes to buy a home, mortgage interest rates have soared from around 3 percent when Biden took office to 7 percent today. That can be a difference of hundreds of dollars a month.
Getting to and from work is also once again costing Americans more as gas prices are soaring once again.
“The national average for gas prices stood at about $3.78 a gallon on Tuesday — about 25 cents higher than that seen one month ago, according to motor club AAA,” The Associated Press reported on Wednesday.
Former Reagan economist Larry Kudlow blasted Biden’s destructive economic policies.
“After Joe Biden’s $2 trillion American Rescue Plan, which was his landmark policy, a 6.5 percent economy delivered by Donald Trump sputtered to a 1 percent growth rate in Biden’s first full year, 2022 and early 2023,” Kudlow said in June.
“And after Trump hand-delivered a 1.4 percent inflation rate, under Bidenomics, it soared to a 9 percent inflation rate, which destroyed family affordability and worker income,” the Fox Business host added.
Kudlow had the perfect capper to his comments. After Biden was heard criticizing former President Ronald Reagan’s economic policies, Kudlow quipped, “Reagan healed the sick and Biden has infected the healthy.”
Sadly, according to Fitch Ratings, things are going to get worse.
“Fitch Ratings predicted a recession starting in the fourth quarter of 2023 later this year and extending into the first quarter of 2024, according to its press release. The agency also predicted that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates by September to between 5.5 percent and 5.75 percent,” the DNCF reported.
Joe Biden may think he has a success to celebrate as part of his re-election campaign, but Americans beg to differ.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.