The Bidenomics Scam

President Biden often brags how “Bidenomics” is succeeding. Every word he says about the American economy is a lie.

We are surrounded by evidence that Bidenomics is a failure. Inflation — having reached 9.7 percent continues to be high and interest rates are at a 22-year high. Food, gasoline, insurance, electric power and virtually everything else is much more expensive than it was when Biden came into office in January 2021. (READ MORE: VIDEO: Joe Biden Touts ‘Bidenomics,’ Ignores Inflation)

Inflation rates are still too high at about 3 percent but they don’t even include the prices of food and energy. The Consumer Price Index does, and it’s about 3 percent higher than last year. The Winston Group calculates what it calls the “Presidential Inflation Rate” on various items. Last March, the results for Biden were: overall inflation is 15 percent, food is up 18 percent, energy is up 37.2 percent, and rent was up 13.5 percent.

Need further proof? Last week, Fitch Ratings downgraded its US debt rating from the highest AAA rating to AA+, citing “a steady deterioration in standards of governance.” Biden’s reckless overspending — and the regulatory onslaught he unleashed — are the component parts of that deterioration in standards of government.

Last week Biden said, Bidenomics is “rooted in what always worked best for this country: investing in America. Because when you invest in our people, when you strengthen the middle class, we see stronger economic growth that benefits everybody.”

But Bidenomics doesn’t mean investing in America: it means investing in “climate change” and so much other reckless and unnecessary spending that it’s hard to grasp. (READ MORE: Wanted: A President Who Will Embrace the Spending Challenge)

In 2019, the federal budget was already much too large at $4.4 trillion. It grew, purportedly to deal with the COVID pandemic, to $6.6 trillion in 2020, a 47 percent increase. Much of the COVID-related funding expired but the Biden team didn’t decrease spending: they increased it.

$4 trillion? $6 trillion? It’s not funny money, it’s real. It’s hard to understand what those numbers really mean.

What’s a trillion dollars? As I have explained before, if you took $100 bills and laid them end-to-end around the earth’s equator — about 25,000 miles — you’d circle the planet 8.8 times before you reached $1 trillion.

Our national debt has already gone above $32 trillion. That’s more than any other nation’s debt.

Biden’s spending spree began with $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.  Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act spent another $765 billion, Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act contributed another $278 billion, and the CHIPS Act “chipped” in $255 billion more.

Let’s not forget that, according to the Congressional Budget Office in June 2022, Biden’s executive orders have cost another $532 billion.

All of these actions combined to drive the nation’s debt higher. Think about this. The interest payments the US makes on its debt each year is now greater than the entire defense budget, which stands at just under $900 billion. Soon we’ll be paying $1 trillion in interest to cover Biden’s spending.

Biden’s spending is the proximate cause of what became the worst inflation in 40 years. This amounts to the classic definition of inflation: too many dollars chasing too few goods and services. And Biden is continuing to spend not just in dollars but in actions that will make life more costly for every American.

Radical liberals such as Biden and Co. just can’t leave people alone. They’re always looking for ways to regulate our daily lives and they do that in actions that impose costs on all of us.

Take their actions against gas stoves, water heaters, light bulbs, and air conditioners. Each demand that carbon emissions be reduced to protect the climate, which Biden assures us is the greatest danger to our national security.

For example, last week the EPA announced a regulation that would require a 40 percent cut in the production of hydroflorocarbons, the gases most frequently used in air conditioners. That requirement will impose greater costs on consumers both for the air conditioners themselves as well as the almost-certain increased electricity consumption by the air conditioners. According to a Fox News report the cost to replace the coolant in your air conditioner will rise by $150 to $200.

Under the Biden regulatory onslaught, water heaters will also be less efficient and gas stoves will produce less heat. (They revised their gas stove regs last week — quietly — because they had to admit that consumers will save less money than projected.)

And that’s hardly the end of the story. Last week, the Biden crew created a regulation outlawing the sale of incandescent light bulbs which are low cost and illuminate most homes and businesses. Now we’re only allowed to buy “environmentally-friendly” LED bulbs which are more expensive. Some contain toxic gases, so be careful not to break them.

Also last week the Biden Department of Transportation announced that by 2032, the corporate average fuel economy was going to be raised to 58 miles per gallon in its effort to compel people to buy electric vehicles. That action is supposedly going to lead to the “de-truckification” of America. Say goodbye to non-electric pickup trucks and SUVs.

People don’t want electric vehicles that quickly run out of power and take hours to recharge. But that’s no concern to the Biden administration. Hang on to your gasoline-powered cars and trucks. You may not be able to purchase any like them after 2032.

One of the banes to business has been the requirement for “environmental impact statements” which supposedly includes studies on the environmental costs — not the dollar cost — of every major project. Last week, the EPA announced that all future studies will have to include studies of effects on “climate change” and “environmental justice,” whatever that is.

Announcing that change, the EPA said that “environment” has to be redefined to include the purported “global” effects of climate change and “environmental justice.” In part, the revision states that, “Leases for oil and gas extraction or natural gas pipelines have local effects, but also have reasonably foreseeable global indirect and cumulative effects related to GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions.” (READ MORE: SEC’s Proposed Climate-Change Rules Would Cripple Public Companies)

What that means is not only that the impact statements will be more costly and time-consuming but also that environmental impacts will be judged by an unconstitutionally-vague “environmental justice” standards. It will take years to overturn the “environmental justice” standard.

All of these Biden actions seek to regulate our lives and the products that make life easier. I shudder to think what they’ll regulate next. The only certainty is that the costs of everything we rely on to live will continue to increase. Reckless spending and overregulation are the only things that comprise Biden’s plan to “Build Back America.”

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