President Biden’s First Year Report Card
President Biden and the Democrats in Congress inherited a nation in crisis from Trump. The economy lost 140,000 jobs in December 2020 and the Trump Administration didn’t have a plan to distribute the life saving vaccines. The Democrats rolled up their sleeves and went immediately to work to clean up Trump’s mess. Here’s a summary of what we’ve accomplished.
President Biden has been very successful in passing his legislative agenda, notwithstanding some recent set backs. The American Rescue Plan included the largest middle class tax cut in history, money for vaccines, money for schools and funding for law enforcement. Every Republican voted no.
Subsequently, Biden passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Infrastructure Week had become a running joke during the Trump Administration but Biden got it done. It’s the most significant piece of infrastructure legislation since the Interstate Highway Act of 1956.
Already we’re seeing positive results from the passage of these two bills. In just one year, the Biden-Harris Administration has gotten 74% of adults fully vaccinated. Approximately 210 million Americans have been fully vaccinated, up from 2 million when Biden took office. Currently, 1 billion tests are being sent out for free to the American people — that’s up from zero when Trump left office. What’s more, 400 million high quality N95 masks are being distributed for free. That’s in addition to 30 million masks sent out in 2020.
We’ve also seen amazing progress in opening and keeping schools open. At the present time, 96% of schools are open — up from 46% when Biden took office. From listening to the “liberal” mainstream media and the GOP, one would think that all schools are closed.
We’ve seen similar astonishing progress on the economy. Since the Democrats began to run Washington last year, a record 6.4 million jobs have been created. In contrast, in 2020, 9.4 million jobs were lost. Unemployment has dropped from 6.4% to 3.9%.
That’s not the only good news on the economy. Five million Americans have gained health insurance, child poverty has been cut by 40% and 5.4 million new businesses have been created. That’s up from 3.2 million new businesses per year between 2015 to 2019.
This is incredible progress in light of the GOP’s unprecedented and cynical sabotage campaign. “Biden was never going to be another FDR or LBJ, not with only 50 votes in the Senate. He was lucky to pass more than $3 trillion in spending last year, with $1.2 trillion of that coming in a bipartisan infrastructure bill.” Max Boot, Washington Post columnist.
The D.C. Republicans have obstructed Biden’s agenda because they are invested in the failure of the U.S. so that they can regain power. Representative Chip Roy (R-TX) summarized the GOP’s strategy as follows: “Our job is to do everything we can to slow all of that down to get to December of 2022 and then get in here and lead… 18 more months of chaos and the inability to get stuff done. That’s what we want.”
Despite unpatriotic GOP sabotage, a great deal has been accomplished but our job isn’t finished. As many of you know, the “liberal” mainstream press and the GOP have tried to convince the voters that somehow Biden is a failure because the pandemic isn’t over and we’re experiencing our highest rate of inflation since George H.W. Bush was president.
The pandemic hasn’t ended because millions of Republicans won’t get vaccinated and won’t vaccinate their children. “As for the coronavirus, it has proved more pervasive than anticipated, and Biden is paying the price. But it’s hardly his fault that the omicron variant spread around the world, or that Republican governors and Supreme Court justices are sabotaging vaccination mandates, or that only 59% of Republicans are vaccinated (compared with 91 percent of Democrats).” Max Boot.
Quite frankly, no one could have foreseen that 25% of adults would refuse to get vaccinated and also refuse to vaccinate their kids. Moreover, no one could have predicted that Fox News and the right wing media would actively push out on a daily basis dangerous misinformation about vaccines. The GOP sabotage campaign is simply without precedent. They are killing their own base to make Biden look bad and regain power.
“Biden’s biggest error on Covid-19 was underestimating the ruthlessness of his opponents, who have done all they can to undermine America’s pandemic response.” Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning New York Times columnist.
The continuing pandemic has also contributed to an inflation problem in the U.S. and the rest of the world. At the present time, the European Union is undergoing its highest inflation rate since 1997. Simply stated, inflation is a world wide problem. If Biden was to blame for inflation, it would be low in the rest of the world. It’s not. GOP attempts to blame Biden for inflation are simply disingenuous.
We haven’t fully recovered from the Trump disaster yet but we’re going in the right direction, despite GOP obstruction. “It does not surprise me that despite progress on Covid, despite progress on the economy, voters are not going to give us a passing grade yet. But President Biden was elected to a four-year term, not a one-year term.” White House chief of staff Ron Klein.
The same people who wrecked the country during the Trump years want you to forget about it and return them to power in 2022. Already, the D.C. Republicans have made it clear that they will shutdown the government and stiff U.S. creditors to bully the Democrats into cutting Social Security and Medicare. A GOP default would throw 6 million Americans out of work and cause the deepest recession since 2008–09. There is your GOP platform for 2022.
In CD01, please support Patty Pansing Brooks. In CD02, Tony Vargas and Alisha Shelton are challenging Bacon. Let’s send them to D.C. and chase the money changers out of the temple of democracy!