Under President Joe Biden, the US economy is outperforming the rest of the G7 both in 2023 and projected for 2024. Similarly for the rest of the industrialized world. This article details some of the reason that Biden’s economic policies are separating the US from the rest of the West and confounding pundits who have been predicting a recession.
Throughout his presidency, President Joe Biden, with the help of Vice President Kamala Harris, has been incredibly active through executive orders in battling the loss of Roe v. Wade and the statewide iniatives designed to deny women health care, including abortions, access to contraception, safeguarding patient privacy, and sensitive health information. Initiatives include protecting the right to travel, providing services to veterans, current service members, and emergency abortion care.
From NBC News, “The new fourth-quarter numbers showed a 13% decline in murder in 2023 from 2022, a 6% decline in reported violent crime, and a 4% decline in reported property crime. That’s based on data from around 13,000 law enforcement agencies, policing about 82% of the U.S. population, that provided the FBI with data through December.”
Last September, President Joe Biden joined United Auto Workers on the picket line in Michigan, the first for any US president. The strike was against the Big 3 auto manufacturers. Not only did that strike result in at least a 25% pay raise for striking auto workers, including an immediate 11% raise, it also “inspired” major global auto makers that weren’t targets of the strike, including Nissan, Hyundai, and Honda to raise wages to their American workers across the board.
Not only did President Joe Biden choose an indigenous woman to run a major governmental department and sit in the Cabinet, but the choice was the Department of Interior, which deals with our protected lands and natural resources, covers the Bureau of Indian Affairs, among other very important matters for all Americans, including our indigenous populations. Deb Haaland has been an environmental warrior, and an advocate of the rights of the indigenous peoples of the US.
Partially because of the CHIPS and Science Act, the economy has added 789,000 manufacturing jobs in the three years since President Joe Biden took office.
The manufacturing jobs comeback under Biden is the biggest since the early 1950s.
As part of the Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden enables Medicare to negotiate certain prescription drug prices, picking ten of the most purchased drugs on the market, starting in 2026. More drugs are intended to be part of this program each year.
Among President Joe Biden’s campaign promises was to fight back against the monopolistic practices of the major power brokers in this country. He has delivered and continues to work towards fulfilling these promises. He has done so with executive actions, Federal litigation, and the NLRB. He has prepared an aggressive agenda for 2024, so let’s keep watching to see how that goes.
On day 1 of his presidency, January 20, 2021, President Joe Biden recommitted to the battle against climate change by rejoining the Paris Agreement, abandoned by his predecessor.
The national uninsured rate reached an all time low in 2023, as a result of the ACA and the Biden Administration efforts to reach out to uninsured people. The Inflation Reduction Act aided significantly in this program.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a stronger than expected addition of 275,000 jobs in February. While the unemployment rate ticked up to 3.9%, experts argue that this means more people are entering the job market. And, in staying under 4% for the 25th straight month, the economy hits its longest stretch under 4% in over 50 years. This was also the 38th consecutive month of job growth, the 5th longest on record.
President Joe Biden cancelled the permit for the contentious Keystone XL Pipeline on his first day in office, as a permit that does “not serve the U.S. national interest.”
President Joe Biden, through executive actions, has thus far cancelled $138 billion in student loan debt. This affects 3.7 million borrowers. Included are:
President Joe Biden signed the Violence Against Women Act of 2022, reauthorizing it until 2027. The previous administration had allowed the Act to lapse. This new version of VAWA provides unprecedented support for survivors of sexual violence in Native Alaskan and tribal communities, giving them jurisdiction to prosecute non-tribal offenders who sexually assault tribal members.
Under the Biden Administration, the economy has added 14 million jobs in 3 years. In case someone tells you that’s just about getting out of the pandemic, the economy is at plus 4.9 million jobs over pre-pandemic levels. For perspective, under Trump, the economy lost 2.9 million jobs.
The Inflation Reduction Act authorized an $80 Billion boost in the IRS budget. Fortune reports that the IRS now estimates that this boost will result in recovery of $560 Billion in unpaid taxes from wealthy tax cheats. All the while, the Republican Congress seeks to strip that funding out of the legislation.
Finally, a president takes executive action relating to the failed drug war. President Joe Biden does it twice. Thousands of people are affected by the order. Also, Biden has been lobbying state governors and his regulators are making noises about reviewing cannabis’ Schedule 1 classification, with an eye toward rescheduling it as a Schedule 3 drug. Baby steps, to be sure, but finally a move in the right direction.
President Joe Biden’s foreign policy initiatives start with repairing the damage done to NATO and the US involvement in NATO by Trump. The coalition Biden built around defending Ukraine has strengthened and expanded NATO, and has pushed back on Putin’s imperialist desires. The US took the lead in sanctions against Putin that have interfered with his war against Ukraine and helped change the balance of power. This, in spite of the stunning support for Putin the the Republican led House. This week, Hungary finally consented to allow Sweden to join NATO, making it official.
In August, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act, designed to strengthen American manufacturing and innovation. The act invests $280 billion to bolster US semiconductor capacity, catalyze R&D, and create regional high-tech hubs and a bigger, more inclusive STEM workforce. Almost immediately after Biden signed it, the private sector promised investment of over $200 billion in tech and manufacturing. The economy has gained manufacturing jobs at a pace not seen since the 1950s.
Update:
In the brutal Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, not only did the Supreme Court overrule Roe v. Wade, Justice Thomas’ concurring opinion stated his willingness to review previous cases protecting same sex and interracial marriage! Because of this, Congress passed, and President Joe Biden signed the Respect For Marriage Act, which enshrines rights for same sex and interracial marriages into law, and requires all 50 states and territories to recognize such marriages as valid.
Within 60 days of taking office, President Joe Biden signed into law The American Rescue Plan.
Among the many important provisions it contains are:
The Biden White House has prioritized judiciary reform. President Joe Biden may outpace the three previous administrations, while placing more than 100 new judges, many of whom are women and/or people of color, on the bench at the appellate level and, Biden has placed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black female on the Supreme Court.
President Joe Biden ended a 30-year streak of federal inaction on gun violence by signing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
The act created enhanced background checks, closed the “boyfriend” loophole, and provided funds for youth mental health.
See an article on the subject here.
Yes, we need to do more, but getting any kind of meaningful gun legislation in this political climate seemed impossible, and Biden did it.
Ripped from today’s (well, now yesterday’s) headlines. President Joe Biden has been pushing the elimination of lead pipes from our nation’s infrastructure since he took office, and continues that effort today, with the allocation of an additional $5.8 billion for this effort. This funding comes from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
When President Joe Biden became president, the unemployment rate was 6.4%. By the end of his first year in office, the rate had fallen to 3.9%.
After going back up to 4.0 in January, 2022, the unemployment rate has been below 4% every month since.
That’s two straight years. That is a historically-long stretch of great unemployment numbers.
For you numbers people, check this out.
Also, in January, 2023, the unemployment rate dropped to its lowest level since the 1960s!
As part of the Inflation Reduction Act, out-of-pocket costs for insulin are capped at $35 per month prescription for enrollees of Medicare Part B and Part D.
Although President Joe Biden wasn’t able to extend that cap to people not on Medicare in the IRA, the political pressure he has brought to this fight has caused major drug manufacturers to cap the cost of prescriptions for insulin to $35 per month for millions of people not on Medicare.
In November, 2021 President Joe Biden succeeded in convincing a reluctant Senate to pass the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
This legislation was a $1.2 trillion bipartisan package to increase investment in the national network of bridges and roads, airports, public transport, and national broadband internet, as well as waterways and energy systems.
The Dow Jones and S& P 500 are at all-time highs. NASDAQ hit an all time high in November, 2021, and is nearing that number again.
The S&P 500 just topped 5,000 for the first time on solid economic news, including positive inflation news.
As part of the Inflation Reduction Act, the US has made a $369 billion investment in battling climate change, the largest such investment in U.S. history.
Included in the investments are:
For a deeper dive, here’s an article on the subject.
And it’s still going. The January, 2024 jobs report was very encouraging, as employment is surging.
President Joe Biden’s approval ratings on the economy are disastrous. There is a deep disconnect between sentiment and reality. I’ll be hitting this issue pretty regularly, between the economy in general and the jobs market, among other aspects.
The Pandemic hit the world economy pretty hard. How nations responded have determined where they are now. Under Biden, the U.S. has led the world in the recovery. And it’s not close. Here are the numbers.
The U.S. economy has, at least in part, steered the global economy away from a recession.
