President Biden has embarked on a new mission: convince voters that his “Bidenomics” economic plan is boosting the lives of middle-class Americans.
The economy reigns supreme in presidential politics and Mr. Biden is banking on his ability to sell voters on a liberal vision that more government spending and taxes on the wealthy will boost the middle class better than Republicans’ promises of tax cuts and smaller government.
To kick off the summer of Bidenomics, the president and Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday announced more than $40 billion of spending on high-speed internet projects. They pledged that every household in the country will have internet access by 2030.
“All told, this is the strongest, fastest economic growth anywhere in the world,” Mr. Biden said at the White House event. “Jobs are back. Manufacturing is back.”
The new spending on broadband internet launched the administration’s “Investing in America” tour — a three-week blitz of events and speeches to tout Mr. Biden’s economic agenda.
Mr. Biden is pivoting to an economic message because he knows he must sway public opinion about this issue which is always a top concern for voters in presidential elections.
He has his work cut out for him.
Public confidence in Mr. Biden‘s handling of the economy remains low in a time of high inflation and a difficult housing market. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll released month found that only 33% of adults approve of Mr. Biden‘s economic performance and just 24% said national economic conditions are in good shape.
At the White House event, Mr. Biden touted his legislative wins, saying that his administration has attracted $490 billion in private investment to build semiconductors, electric vehicles, batteries and fiber optic cables. He said his administration has delivered more than 13 million jobs, including nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs, since the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While it’s technically correct that the White House added roughly 800,000 manufacturing jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, those numbers include jobs restored after the pandemic.
During the pandemic shutdowns, manufacturing output fell by 43% and hours worked dropped by 38%, the BLS found.
Despite the rosy job numbers, inflation remains stubbornly high and Mr. Biden has struggled to get it under control. And economists generally agree that massive government spending spurs higher inflation.
What’s more, to blunt inflation, the Federal Reserve Bank has repeatedly hiked interest rates that have stung Americans with high rates for credit cards, auto loans and home mortgages. The average mortgage interest rate is hovering around 6.9% — the highest in a decade and a challenge for many homebuyers.
Recent data shows inflation is easing, though the annual rate is still higher than when Mr. Biden took office.
Inflation dropped to 4% in May compared with a year earlier, down sharply from a 9.1% peak last June. The inflation rate was 1.4% in January 2021 when Mr. Biden took office. Core inflation rose 0.4% in May after steady monthly increases averaging 0.4% in 2023. Core inflation remains up 5.3% from a year ago.
The case for Bidenomics was sketched out in a memo Monday by senior Biden advisers Anita Dunn and Mike Donilon.
“The President came into office with a long-held and fundamentally different economic vision — and he was determined to turn the page on the failed trickle-down policies of the past,” they wrote in the memo. “Two years later, there is clear and compelling evidence that Bidenomics is both a winning economic strategy that is delivering results, and an approach that is strongly supported by the vast majority of the American people.”
They argue that the U.S. economic recovery is proceeding faster than the economic growth of other countries whose economies have shrunk, including the United Kingdom and Germany.
“Better pay and other Biden Administration policies have helped put middle-class Americans into stronger financial position than they were in pre-pandemic — despite the global challenge of inflation,” they said. “Americans have higher net worths and higher real disposable incomes today than they did before the pandemic.”
Steve Hanke, a professor of Applied Economics at The Johns Hopkins University, said Mr. Biden’s economic policies have stretched the M2 money supply, defined as all of the cash people have on hand plus money deposited into accounts. When the money supply is stretched too thin, that could lead to a recession.
“The money supply, as measured by M2, has contracted by 4.6% over the past year, a contraction that we have not seen since 1938. With that, the U.S. will be in a recession early next year,” he said.
Mr. Biden has a series of events this week to pitch the narrative that his economic policies are working.
On Wednesday, Mr. Biden will visit Chicago to give what the White House billed as a “major address” on his economic vision. On Friday, the president will deliver remarks about his efforts to lower costs for Americans.
He will argue, according to his economic advisers, that his policies of higher taxes and targeted government spending is working better than the low-tax, reduced spending agenda pushed by Republicans, which he characterizes as “failed trickle-down economic policies.”
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the president’s Bidenomics tour will “remind voters of the suffering his failed agenda has caused.”
“With sky-high inflation, soaring violent crime, a humanitarian and drug crisis at the border, and weakness on the world stage, Americans do not want another four years under Biden,” Ms. McDaniel said in a statement.
