JENNY BETH MARTIN: ‘Bidenomics’ Is The Gift That Keeps On Giving

JENNY BETH MARTIN: ‘Bidenomics’ Is The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Jenny Beth Martin on December 11, 2023

As Christmas approaches, Americans are making a list and checking it twice — not to determine who’s been naughty or nice, but to determine what they can afford this Christmas. For all too many of them, the answer is, not much, and certainly not as much as before Joe Biden became president.

That creates a political problem for the president, because even as he’s spent the better part of the past six months touting the benefits of “Bidenomics” (suggesting the word connotes a rising standard of living for the majority), the American people have come to a different far different conclusion. For them, “Bidenomics” means, “I can’t afford it.”

A recent Bloomberg News analysis shows why: A basket of goods for the average family that cost $100 before the COVID-19 emergency costs $119.27 today. “Since early 2020,” says the piece, “prices have risen about as much as they had in the full 10 years preceding the health emergency.” 

Electricity is up 25% since January 2020, and groceries the same. A pound of ground beef is up from $3.29 to $5.23; two pounds of chicken breast have risen from $6.12 to $8.44; and coffee has gone from $4.17 to $6.18.

You won’t save any money going out to eat — restaurant food is up 24%.

And getting there isn’t any less expensive, either. After peaking around $5 per gallon last year, gasoline has dropped somewhat, but gasoline prices today are still 60% higher than they were on the day Joe Biden took office.

Because of Biden’s bad energy policies (read: shutting down pipelines; stricter EV regulations; no leases for drilling; and new taxes on coal, oil, and natural gas, among others), energy prices have gone up overall by 30% in less than three years — electricity is up 25%, propane gas is up 23%, natural gas is up 25%, and diesel fuel is up 47%.

Housing, too, is far more expensive, and nearing unaffordable. In January 2021, the monthly mortgage payment on a median-priced home was $989. Today, that number has more than doubled, to $2,041. Mortgage rates have more than doubled since Biden took office, pricing many families out of the market – and forcing sellers to pull back and sit on properties they’d prefer to sell, but cannot.

Not surprisingly, American families have turned to their credit cards just to make ends meet. The result: Americans now hold more than $1 trillion in credit card debt. That’s a record high.

It’s no wonder Biden’s approval ratings, and, specifically, his approval rating on his handling of the economy, are down. In this recent survey, he’s at 40% approve, 49% disapprove on his overall job rating, and 36% approve, 61% disapprove on his handling of the economy. A full 76 percent said the economy was either “not so good” or “poor” when asked to rate economic conditions right now. Just 26% of the survey respondents said Biden’s economic policies had helped the economy “a lot” or “somewhat,” while 48 percent said his policies had hurt the economy “somewhat” or “a lot.”

And in this poll’s version of the killer question Ronald Reagan posed in his one debate with Jimmy Carter in October of 1980 – “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” – just 4% say they are “much better off” and 10 percent say they are “somewhat better off” when asked how they have fared since Joe Biden became president.

Policies have consequences, and Americans are suffering under the real-world consequences of Joe Biden’s policies.

It’s bad enough that Americans have to suffer under the consequences of Biden’s bad policies. What makes it worse is that Biden and his administration are doubling down on their bad policies. They refuse to learn from the real-world experience of seeing the results of their policies; instead, they continue to act as if those consequences are not visible to anyone, let alone everyone.

In Reagan’s famous “A Time for Choosing” speech in October 1964 — the speech that many historians credit for launching his political career — he also famously said, “The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just they know so much that isn’t so.”

Biden and his Democrat allies know they want more government spending, more government programs, more government regulation, more government power and control over our lives.

Meanwhile, Rudolph goes hungry, because Santa can’t afford to feed his reindeer.

Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.