The Other McCain

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Joe Biden Lies About the Economy

Posted on | October 22, 2022 | 1 Comment

Of course, the headline could have been simplified — “Joe Biden Lies” — because every word out of his mouth is false, no matter the topic, but his lies Friday at Delaware State University were about the economy specifically. The official topic, “Remarks by President Biden on Student Loan Forgiveness,” as the White House web site phrases it, was just a pretext for Biden to engage in electioneering ahead of the midterms. But while we’re on the subject of “Student Loan Forgiveness,” let me remind you that in August, I explained (“Biden’s Illegal Boondoggle Giveaway”) that the President of the United States does not have the authority to order the cancellation of student loan debt, and that the Biden administration is falsely claiming such authority under the 2003 HEROES Act, a measure intended to provide assistance to military personnel deployed overseas during the War on Terror.

Biden himself admitted he doesn’t have this authority, and was against student loan “forgiveness” during the 2020 campaign (when it was part of Bernie Sanders’ socialist agenda), so why did he pivot suddenly in 2022 to claim this authority, which he does not actually have?

One word: Politics. Democrats who couldn’t muster enough votes in Congress to pass student loan “forgiveness” legislation were looking ahead to the midterm election campaign and, desirous of energizing “the youth vote,” seized upon the notion of having Biden cancel student debt by executive order, with the HEROES Act as pretext. Last month, six states sued the administration, arguing that the president acted unconstitutionally, and Friday an appeals court granted an injunction to halt the “forgiveness” program while the case is appealed to the Supreme Court (where, God willing, it will be permanently voided).

Anyway, that’s the background on Biden’s trip to Delaware State University which is, not coincidentally, in the category of HBCU (Historically Black College or University), allowing Biden to kill two political birds with one stone, (a) energizing the youth vote and (b) energizing the black vote, because why pander to just one Democratic Party constituency at a time, eh? Of course, the bill for this pandering — the $400 billion that Biden’s “forgiveness” is expected to cost — will be sent to the taxpayers, who are expected to be happy about going to work every day and paying taxes to fund a benefit for other people’s lazy kids who took out a bunch of student loans they don’t want to repay.

Here’s an obvious question: If your Mama and Daddy don’t want to help you repay your student loans, why should anyone else want to do it? Like, if one of my kids got into a desperate financial situation, I’m sure my wife and I would find some way to help them, and I expect most other parents would do the same, because we love our kids, right? So who are these college kids whose parents don’t love them? And why are the rest of us — going to work and paying our taxes — expected to pick up the tab for the irresponsible financial decisions of these unloved kids?

As obvious as these questions are, nobody in the national media ever asks Joe Biden or other Democrats to answer them. Student loan “forgiveness” simply doesn’t make sense, from a logical or moral perspective, but because it is a policy favored by one party, the fundamental deficiency of the policy is ignored by Democratic Operatives With Bylines.

So there is Biden at Delaware State, pandering to his party’s constituents, telling them to go to the government “Free Money” website where they can apply for his student loan forgiveness program (which he knows damned well the Supreme Court is going to strike down). And after he gets done promoting his unconstitutional giveaway, Biden then switches to an attack on Republicans and starts talking about deficits:

I will never apologize for helping working- and middle-class Americans as they recover from the pandemic, especially not to the same Republicans officials who voted for a $2 trillion tax cut that mainly benefited the wealthy Americans and the biggest corporations that wasn’t paid for and racked up our deficit.
I don’t want to hear it from MAGA Republicans — officials who had hundreds of thousands of dollars of debts, even millions of dollars in pandemic relief loans forgiven who now are attacking — attack me for helping working-class and middle-class Americans. . . .

(What, exactly, is he talking about here? Democrats voted for “pandemic relief” the same as Republicans did, and exactly how is it that opposition to an unconstitutional taxpayer-funded boondoggle is an attack on “working- and middle-class Americans”? But the real Big Lie here is the claim that the “$2 trillion tax cut” only benefited wealthy corporations, because I’m sure as heck not a wealthy big corporation, and I got a nice refund check, thank you very much, President Trump. I could write a few thousand words about the mythology behind Democratic rhetoric against “tax cuts for the rich,” but this is just parenthetical snark, so I’ll save that essay for some other occasion.)

But despite what Republican officials say, we can afford student relief. That’s because the first two years of my administration — that’s because of the historic deficit reduction, the very deficit reduction the Republicans voted against.
This morning, my administration announced that this year the deficit fell — the federal deficit fell by one trillion four hundred billion dollars just this year. The largest one-year drop in all of American history: one trillion four hundred billion.
And it follows last year’s historic drop on the deficit of $350 billion.
And we’re going to reduce the deficit by another $250 billion over the next decade. And the reason for that is because of what — Medicare is going to be able to negotiate drug prices and lower the costs.
We pay the highest drug prices of any nation in the world for the same drug. You can buy the same exact drug in a drugstore here in Dover or Wilmington, and if you go over to Paris, France, or anywhere in Europe, it can be as much as 40 percent to 60 percent less. Same exact drug.
So, folks, I don’t want to hear any weeping and gnashing of teeth from pharma — the big companies.
Folks, in just 20 months since I’ve been in office, we cut the deficit in half.

What word shall I use to describe this? Bullshit will do.

Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute has a few more words than that in a column at the New York Post explaining the shell game that Biden is playing with “deficit reduction.” When the pandemic hit in early 2020, Congress voted for hundreds of billions of dollars in “pandemic relief” which, of course, was not spent all at once, but instead involved funding for programs that continued into 2021. These programs expired in 2022 — the emergency had ended, and the funding ended with it — and Biden is falsely claiming credit for this as something he did to reduce the deficit. In fact, Biden and Democrats in Congress increased deficit spending for years to come, so that the truth is the exact opposite of what Biden said.

So now I’ve written 1,200 words explaining what most of you already knew — Biden is lying, as always — and most days I just let it slide by me, but this particular steaming pile of bollocks, delivered at Delaware State University, was aired live Friday on Fox News. At the time, I was busy with my day job and couldn’t take time to write anything about it, but I made a note to get back to it on Saturday morning, so that tonight I can discuss it with my friends John Hoge and Dianna Deeley on The Other Podcast, which airs live at 7 p.m. ET. Tune in, OK?




 

Category: Economics, Joe Biden

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One Response to “Joe Biden Lies About the Economy”

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