Biden’s Post-Newtonian Manipulation After Three Years of Misleading State and Senate Run I: The Case for New York and Georgia
Joe Biden’s midterm pitch is increasingly stark and alarmist as he grapples for momentum in an election seemingly slipping away from Democrats that could land him with a Congress inflicting two years of misery on his White House.
In New York, the President was tout the importance of Semiconductor manufacturing, which was not in one of the key Senate swing states. His low approval rating shows how difficult it is for him to help his party climb out of a hole.
Biden simultaneously argued that the economy was in far better shape than most Americans judge it to be and that if they win power next month, Republicans will crash what he framed as a recovery and put Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block.
Democrats are in danger of losing control of the House of Representatives, and their hopes of clinging onto the Senate, if the election environment isn’t changed.
Eleven days out from the election, Republicans are targeting deep blue territory that would enable them to build a wave that could translate into a significant House majority. Republicans only need a net gain of five seats to flip the chamber, and they could win enough seats in the Empire State alone to do that, CNN’s Harry Enten wrote Thursday.
And races that will decide the fate of the Senate also appear to be narrowing, like in Arizona, for instance, where Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly once had a clear lead. Democrats were also rattled this week by a shaky debate performance by Pennsylvania Senate nominee John Fetterman, who is still facing auditory and processing issues after a stroke. The commonwealth represents the party’s best chance to pick up a seat and could be critical to their hopes of holding control of the 50-50 Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris casts the tie-breaking vote. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a conversation overheard with Biden and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday, said he thought the Pennsylvania debate “didn’t hurt us too much,” but expressed concern about the high-profile race in Georgia, saying it’s the state “where we’re going downhill.”
The loss of either chamber could be disastrous for the President, who is bracing for a barrage of Republican investigations targeting his administration, his handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the business affairs of his son, Hunter Biden, who is under investigation by the Justice Department.
There is sufficient uncertainty in polling following recent elections that it is far too early to properly judge the state of the race. But Biden’s speech on Thursday reflected Democrats’ burden in this election and suggested that the historical pattern of first-term presidents getting a midterm election drubbing may be reasserting itself, after his party nursed hopes of bucking the trend this summer in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
His speech proved that it’s impossible to highlight positive aspects of the economy when inflation is close to 40-year highs.
Biden’s warnings of fierce political fights with Republicans over entitlements and government spending in a possible showdown over raising the debt ceiling, meanwhile, served as a preview for what may be acrimonious years to come in Washington if political control is split between the parties.
Unless we yield to their demands to cut Social Security and Medicare, they will shut down the government, refuse to pay our bills and put America in default.
The President said nothing will create more chaos or cause more damage to the American economy, admitting that Democrats always charge Social Security is at risk in elections but also arguing that Republican proposals do threaten the retirement program.
The issue is that if those measures succeed they won’t make a big difference in the election. There’s a chance they could help Biden in 2024 if he decides to run for reelection, but for now, they are aspirational.
Some 45% of voters in Wisconsin, 39% in Michigan, and 32% in Pennsylvania think the economy and inflation is the most important issue in their vote. In each state, this more than doubled the number of those most exercised about the next-highest-ranking issue – abortion. Democrats hoped outrage over the Supreme Court decision would make them less vulnerable in the election.
The latter has even made the gubernatorial race in New York – which hasn’t elected a Republican statewide in two decades – unexpectedly competitive. Hochul was in Syracuse with Biden, which is also home to a competitive House race.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/28/politics/biden-blue-states-midterm-election-analysis/index.html
When Did The First Vice President Win? Comment on Romney’s Unacceptable High-Energy Vision of the American Economy – an Empirical Analysis
The President conjured a vision of the economy that many Americans do not recognize. The disconnect between the two realities – of an economy that is performing strongly in many areas, according to data, and the lived experience out in the country – could well doom Democrats.
But she admitted, “Inflation is very high – it’s unacceptably high and Americans feel that every day,” in the interview broadcast on “Erin Burnett OutFront.”
When a voter’s income is not keeping up with their costs, especially for the staples of everyday life like meat, bread, eggs and gasoline, they are bound to look for scapegoats. Biden is the president in power.
Biden blames outside factors for the hike in living costs, including Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which also pushed up gasoline prices – though these are now easing – and the aftermath of supply chain disruption during the pandemic. Republicans blame Biden for the economy’s overheating due to billions of dollars in cash being flushed into the system.
In an interview with CNN’s Phil Mattingly on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen counseled patience since many of the measures the administration has taken to boost the economy will take time to come on line.
Even though inflation here is lower than in most advanced countries, it is still not comforting to someone sitting at the kitchen table trying to put food on the table.
His comment showed that Biden understands acutely the problem that appears increasingly likely to doom Democrats this election season. But there’s nothing in the short term he can do about it.
Inflation, Politics, and the End of the Americas: Joe Biden’s First Outburst with Air Force One
There were also costly communications mistakes along the way. Administration economists said last spring that inflation would be gradual. That assessment proved to be wildly optimistic, and Republicans have not let voters forget it.
In remarks on inflation in May, Biden tried out a new phrase: “the ultra-MAGA agenda,” referring to a plan by Senator Rick Scott of Florida that would require Congress to reauthorize spending for Social Security and Medicare. Scott has distanced himself from the idea.
The inflation reduction act gave Democrats an accomplishment that they could credibly argue would address rising costs for families. The legislation included price caps for insulin and provisions allowing Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs, for instance. In isolation, those policies were overwhelmingly popular, polls showed.
But that sentiment may have been an illusion: Polls also indicated that only a third of voters had heard of the new law and that the majority did not believe it would reduce inflation.
According to my count, Biden’s speeches have been about the economy more often than any other topic. Progressives complain that Democrats don’t put any resources into promoting achievements, and don’t punish Republicans for their positions.
The president had a negative approval rating and the Democrats felt like they had no choice but to stay out of the race.
President Joe Biden spent hours during his first overseas trip behind closed doors trying to impress a group of US allies that America was back. It was clear, he later told advisers, just how much work remained to convince them of the durability of that commitment.
For the long-serving advisers of Biden, this is a moment in which core elements of the campaign and presidency were vindicated and even mocked.
Biden found a group of allies truly shaken by the events of January 6 at the meetings in England and Belgium. The president tried to assure them that the bloodshed of that day would heal and the bad days of US politics would pass.
When Biden boarded Air Force One to go to Switzerland and meet with Putin, he said that it was important for him to succeed in his agenda, whether it be the vaccine, the economy, or infrastructure. We need to prove we can continue to make progress. I think we will be able to do that.
Instead, as he weighs running for reelection at age 80, he enters the final two years of this term with much of his agenda now law. Core elements of that agenda were driven by bipartisan consensus. Even Biden’s final bipartisan achievement of the year – the $1.7 trillion spending package – includes an initial $500 million to seed the technology and innovation hubs created by the CHIPS and Science Act in parts of the country outside of traditional tech sectors.
One of Biden’s closest and longest-serving advisers said in an interview that Biden does it if he says he is going to do something.
One White House official noted that internal debates on policy decisions are tipped by campaign promises more than once.
Biden’s closest confidants also stress that it’s a perspective that is instructive as the White House prepares for the dramatically reshaped Washington that will confront him upon his return from his family vacation to the US Virgin Islands.
“The whole idea of showing people government can work – we were mocked for that in some corners,” a Biden adviser said. “That’s literally what’s happening now.”
There are still clear challenges ahead. Inflation remains high even if its grip appears to be easing. Biden’s advisers do not expect the economy to grow as much in the next quarter, but they still believe a recession can be avoided.
Biden’s approval ratings, while ticking up, remain low and his age remains a real, if less publicly addressed, concern held by Democrats as they wait for an official decision about whether he will seek reelection.
But Biden’s overarching approach has guided the early-stage planning for the legislative and political implications of a new House Republican majority and served as the basis for aides already working through the outlines of the State of the Union address that will come early next year.
It’s also a defining element of the structure and message planning of a nascent campaign that has taken shape over the last several months and accelerated. Biden’s senior team has become increasingly confident that a reelection campaign will be green lit in the weeks ahead.
White House officials view the political salience of his agenda as both an underappreciated element of their ability to defy the expectations of sweeping GOP gains in the midterms and as a critical piece of what comes next. A divided government and a very narrow legislative pathway doesn’t really have an effect on the agenda that is in the implementation phase.
In a memo to allies, Mike Donilon, the White House senior adviser and long-standing member of Biden’s inner circle, wrote that it forms the basis for even stronger achievements in the new year.
Biden has laid down strict directives for efficient implementation for senior aides to follow, advisers said.
“It’s not subtle,” a senior administration official said of the message from the top. We need to get it right and in the moments when we don’t, we have to fix it.
According to a long-time Biden aide, people told the Vice President that he wouldn’t impress them, or that it wasn’t the right message.
Biden saw his infrastructure proposal as a central policy plank of his campaign as his opponents raced to outdo one another with transformational progressive proposals which failed to include a way to pass a bitterly divided Congress.
Biden and his economic advisers zeroed in on an intensive manufacturing and supply chain agenda that grew more aggressive and transformational as a once-in-a-century pandemic gripped the country. They felt that it was a key to reversing the atmosphere that allowed Donald Trump to get to the Oval Office.
A Memoir with Biden during his 20th Birthday: How Modern American Industrial Policy Fits into the Office of Vice-President Donald J. B. Biden
This was a good moment for his theory of the case. He could apply some of the principles he’s beenguiled by his entire career.
Biden’s time as a senator and vice president helped to maintain those principles while he pondered another run for the presidency and they were refined while he was out of office.
“Ever since I’ve talked to the president about the economy, he’s distinguished between the short-term and the long-term, between consumption and investment,” said Jared Bernstein, Biden’s chief economist as vice president who now sits on the Council of Economic Advisers. These have always been in his economic thinking.
The principles of Biden’s 2020 campaign stayed the same as outlined in the 22-page memo he drafted in 2015, when Biden weighed a run for the presidency.
All of the anecdotes from the period, even the ones about the dignity of work, the importance of breathing room, and the American idea ofpossibilities, are the same that were used in his speeches as president.
During the first two years of Trump’s presidency, he pointed out a clear through-line from Biden’s days as a senator through his time as vice president.
The pain of his son’s battle with brain cancer and his decision to stay out of the White House were part of the reasons Biden wrote a book. The book tour is seen by Biden’s inner circle as an important experience in the process of running for president in 2020.
If the effort to turn that foundation into a coherent policy agenda was accelerated and expanded in the final months of the campaign, it was turbocharged during a transition that saw Democrats take control of the Senate majority.
If the legislation were to downsize the infrastructure, manufacturing, research and development, climate and equity proposals, officials designed them into interlocking pieces to work in tandem.
The goal of the strategy was to get things to work together, according to National Economic Council Chairman Brian Deese.
To be clear, subscribing to the term “industrial policy” still isn’t universally embraced. Deese prefers “Modern American Industrial Strategy.” In its simplest form, it’s the idea that “if you do public investment in a thoughtful way, what you’ll actually do is crowd in private investment,” Deese said.
Research and development funding is going up. Significant public investments are made for national and economic security. The elevation of labor unions and a focus on creating the conditions to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/28/politics/joe-biden-2022/index.html
Biden’s First Foreign Trip to the Philippines: Preliminary Presidential Campaign for Innovation, Jobs, Security, and the Rise of China
On their face, these issues are politically popular and hardly exclusive to Biden. They’re difficult to make a policy out of. At least til the swine flu strikes.
The bipartisan push for a $280 billion CHIPs and Science law was due in large part to the tiny chips found in everything from cars and washing machines to advanced weapons systems. Sen. Todd Young, an Indiana Republican up for reelection in 2022, drove the effort on Capitol Hill – something that underscored the salience of an issue that scrambled traditional political dynamics.
For Young, who had pressed for legislation tied to the issue in the year before Biden entered the White House, it was less about embracing a broader shift in economic policy and more about addressing the fact China had pursued exactly that for a decade or longer. Young was one of 17 Senate Republicans who voted to advance the eventual law that has driven new private sector investment or commitments in the last several months.
The pandemic. The rise of China as key feature of policy making in both parties. The idea of long-term economic incentives that connect the workers and communities left behind by decades is animated by a President.
Kaufman is a close friend of the president and was the Senate Chief of Staff for Biden. This is a man who has been in office so long that he is well-equipped to be president.
In a way it is both an acknowledgement of the unprecedented factors that made Biden Presidency possible, as well as a way of acknowledging the PAIN as well. Another incumbent, or another moment, and advisers note that it wouldn’t be a question of if Biden would win. He wouldn’t have even run.
Perhaps most critically for Biden, the voters sharply reject some of the most extreme voices parroting 2020 election lies in critical races for governor and secretary of state.
In the months before the November elections, Biden recounted his experience on the first foreign trip in a bid to underscore the stakes.
In the weeks that followed, after his travel to Indonesia for the G-20 Summit, he was ready to provide an updated version as he stood against the backdrop of a new factory in Arizona to celebrate the announcement by a Taiwanese chip maker of what would mark one of the largest foreign investments in US history.
The Biden said that the United States was better positioned than any other nation to lead the world economy if it kept its focus.
Biden wrote in aTwitter that it was going to invest in medical research, safety, veteran health care, disaster recovery and getting crucial assistance to Ukraine.
“The White House received the bill from Congress late afternoon on Wednesday. The bill was delivered to the President for his signature by White House staff on a regularly scheduled commercial flight,” a White House official told pool reporters.
It’s at least the second time this year that an important bill has been flown to Biden for his signature. A staffer who was already going to travel to the region carried a bill authorizing about $400 million in aid for Ukraine on a trip to Asia in May. Biden was overseas when he signed the bill.
The legislation includes a large amount of money for nondefense discretionary programs and defense funding. That represents an increase in spending in both areas for fiscal year 2023.
The sweeping package includes roughly $45 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies, an overhaul of the electoral vote-counting law, protections for pregnant workers, an enhancement to retirement savings rules and a ban on TikTok on federal devices.
It also will provide a boost in spending for disaster aid, college access, child care, mental health and food assistance, more support for the military and veterans and additional funds for the US Capitol Police, according to Leahy’s summary and one from Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee. There is a provision that could disenroll up to 19 million people from the nation’s health insurance program for low income Americans.
The bill ran more than 4,000 pages and did not include several items that some lawmakers had fought to include. An expansion of the child tax credit, as well as multiple other corporate and individual tax breaks, did not make it into the final bill. Neither did legislation to allow cannabis companies to bank their cash reserves – known as the Safe Banking Act – or a bill to help Afghan evacuees in the US gain lawful permanent residency. And the spending package did not include a White House request for roughly $10 billion in additional funding for Covid-19 response.
The spending bill will keep the government operating through September and is a product of lengthy negotiations between congressional Democrats and Republicans.
Important context is missed by Biden’s boast. It is true that the federal deficit has fallen by $1.7 trillion under Biden in the two fiscal years, but it is questionable as to how much of a credit Biden deserves for this reduction. Biden did not mention that the primary reason the deficit fell so substantially was that it had skyrocketed to a record high under then-President Donald Trump in 2020 because of bipartisan emergency pandemic relief spending, then fell as expected when the spending expired as planned. Independent analysts say Biden’s own actions, including his laws and executive orders, have had the overall effect of adding to current and projected future deficits, not reducing those deficits.
Still, the deficit-reducing impact of that one bill is expected to be swamped by the deficit-increasing impact of various additional bills and policies Biden has approved.
The 2021 Business Application Census: A historical snapshot of the US Semiconductor Industry and the era of the Reagan-Biden-Trump era
This is true, facts first. There were about 5.4 million business applications in 2021, the highest number since 2005 (the first year for which the federal government released this data for a full year), and about 5.1 million business applications in 2022. A record number of high-propensity business applications, which can turn into a business with a payroll, were seen in 2022, as well as in 2021, when they saw their second-highest total.
Former President Donald Trump’s last full year in office, 2020, also set a then-record for total and high propensity applications. There are many reasons for the boom in entrepreneurship that began after millions of Americans lost their jobs. Among them: some newly unemployed workers seized the moment to start their own enterprises; Americans had extra money from stimulus bills signed by Trump and Biden; interest rates were particularly low until a series of rate hikes that began in the spring of 2022.
The Hispanic or Latino unemployment rate was 4.5% in January 2023, not too far from the record low of 4.0% that was set in September 2019 – though the 4.5% rate in January 2023 was a jump from the 4.1% rate in December 2022. This data series goes back to 1973. The rate was 8.5% in January 2021.
The largest drivers of the structural federal fiscal imbalances were enacted about 50 years ago, despite political rhetoric that blames both the Joseph R. Biden Jr. administration and the Donald J. Trump administration.
The majority of manufacturing investments that have been publicly announced under Biden are in the Semiconductor facilities. The importance of US Semiconductor manufacturing has been emphasized by the Biden administration and they signed a bill in August to help generate major investment.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html
The Inflation Reduction Act Tax Credits Could Wait for an Erratum from the President-Biden State-of-the-Union
Facts First: This claim needs context. While Inflation Reduction Act tax credits will help save families money on their energy bills, it could take years for EV tax credits to become fully available.
Biden’s claim about energy savings is similar to an estimate from clean electricity nonprofit Rewiring America – which estimated last year that a US household could save $1,800 per year if they installed electric heat pumps to heat their water and heat and cool their air, replaced a gas car with an EV, and installed solar.
Ultimately, new electric vehicles will be eligible for up to $7,500. But there’s a big catch: in order to qualify for these tax credits, the vehicles’ final assembly must happen in North America. In order to be given access to the IRA, there have to be at least as many electric vehicle and EV battery components made in the US or countries that have a free trade deal with the US.
The US Treasury Department is expected to issue guidance on critical minerals and batteries in March. But the complex requirements for these tax credits could take years to fully kick in as companies must move their supply chain to North America.
This provision passed because Manchin wanted the US to compete with China on electric vehicles, and it will eventually have the impact of bringing more EV and battery jobs to the US or countries it has a free trade agreement with. Several companies have announced new factories in the US because of the measure.
The credit will be hard to come by in the next two years as vehicle manufacturers try to move their supply chains to the US and North America.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html
The Biden-Trump Expansion: Why Democracy Has Not Decelerated under the Prevalence of Biden? Facts First: The Case of the American Rescue Plan
The child tax credit – both the traditional credit and the enhancement – reduced the child poverty rate from 9.2% to 5.2%, or 43%, according to the Census Bureau. Without the credit, the rate would have fallen from 9.6% to 8.1%.
The child poverty rate fell from 9.7% in 2020, to 5.2% in 2021, with non-cash government assistance taking into account.
As part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act that passed in March 2021, Congress enhanced the child tax credit for one year, beefing up payments to $3,600 for each child up to age 6 and $3,000 for each one ages 6 through 17, for lower- and middle-income families. The tax credit was paid in monthly installments from July through December, but parents could claim the other half when they filed their taxes this year.
On the day of the State of the Union, the national average for a gallon of regular gas was $3.457, according to data from the American Automobile Association. That was more than a dollar more than the previous record high of $5.016. The average on Inauguration Day was still higher than the national average.
President’s policy on gas prices isn’t a factor in the price of gas, despite the president’s claim that gas prices are going to go down.
De Haan said Biden’s releases of oil from the strategic reserve “put some downward pressure on the price of oil, but I would not call it materially significant.”
12 million new jobs were created by us in two years, which is more than any president has ever created in four years.
The economy lost over 22 million jobs in March and April of 2020 because of the Covid-19 epidemic, after Biden became president. The jobs recovery then began immediately after that, under then-President Donald Trump, but there was still an unprecedented hole to fill when Biden took office.
While touting his efforts to stand up to authoritarian leaders in China and Russia, Biden painted himself as a champion of freedom and inaccurately claimed that democracy was spreading under his watch.
Facts First: This claim is at odds with data from Freedom House, a leading nonprofit that tracks democracy and human rights around the world. They believe that democracy has decline over the past few years.
The group’s most recent annual report was titled, ” The Global Expansion of Authoritarian Rule.” The report was called “Democracy under Siege.”
60 countries experienced democratic backsliding in the previous year, while 25 countries improved their position, according to Freedom House. The group highlighted backsliding in Sudan, Nicaragua and Afghanistan, where the Taliban reclaimed power when Biden withdrew all American troops from the country.
The most recent report from Freedom House is a year old. Biden could be saying that autocratic regimes have lost prestige on the world stage.
But the trends appear to be holding. The president of Russia rolled back civil liberties after invading Ukraine a year ago.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html
When Fast Chargers Start to Go On The Road: How Fast Can They Get There, Where Are They Going? A Case Study of McDonald’s in Washington State
In an interview with climate publication Grist last year, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that ultimately the number of EV chargers on the roads “really depends on how the states decide to mix the fast chargers and different types of technology.”
There is also a wide range in how much different types of chargers cost, and individual states have a lot of leeway in deciding what kinds of chargers will go on their roads. DC fast chargers can charge a car to mostly full in 20 minutes to an hour and are meant to go on major highways and roads. Another kind of charger known as an L2 charger can take hours to charge a car to full. Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, a senior Resident fellow at Third Way, told CNN that DC fast chargers cost $100,000 compared to $6,000 for an L2.
The average hourly wage for all employees was $32.57 in January, and $25.84 for non-supervisory positions, according to preliminary data from the BLS. Nationally, the average hourly wage was a projected $33.03. From CNN.
I should have known this, but I didn’t until two years ago. 30 million workers had to sign non-compete agreements Thirty million dollars. A cashier at a burger place cannot take the same job at another burger place and make more money. Well, they just changed it because we exposed it. That was part of the deal, guys, look it up.
Facts First: This is partially true. Millions of rank-and-file employees and independent contractors, in addition to business executives across industries, have signed non-compete agreements that critics say suppress competition, wages and entrepreneurship. The Federal Trade Commission in January proposed a rule to ban employers from imposing those agreements on workers and to rescind all existing noncompete agreements. burger chain workers are subject to noncompete agreements. It isn’t likely right now, anyway.
An investigation in Washington state in 2017 revealed that several fast-food chains, including Arby’s, Auntie Anne’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Carl’s Jr., Cinnabon, Jimmy John’s, and McDonald’s, had been enforcing no-poaching rules that prevented employees from moving between franchises within the same chain – not, as Biden suggested, between rival chains. By the year of 2007, all the chains agreed to end their no-poach practices. The person is from CNN’s David Goldman.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html
Food Inflation and Real Wage Measures in the First Three Months after the CPI: From CNN’s Daniel Dale to Alicia Wallace
Food inflation is coming down, not fast enough, but coming down. In the last six months, inflation has fallen every month while take- home pay has increased.
Overall inflation, as measured by the CPI, was 6.5% in December 2022. The rate of inflation has declined for six months after hitting a 40-year high in June.
Several inflation indicators, including the average change in prices over time of a basket of consumer goods, and the price increases have moderated in recent months. Various measures are used to gauge inflation. Most notably, “core” inflation measures that exclude items with more volatile price increases.
There are various ways to measure real wages. Between December 2001 and December 2020 real hourly earnings declined by 1.7% while real weekly earnings declined by 3.1%. From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Alicia Wallace
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html
Defunding the police: Facts about Biden and the world in the midst of a major debt ceiling crisis in the 21st century
Biden has said that Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare. The drama has flared up again in recent weeks amid the debt ceiling debate. House Republicans are demanding that lifting the borrowing cap be tied to spending reductions.
The Republican Study Committee last year put together a budget plan that would reduce the benefits for future senior citizens by cutting Social Security and Medicare.
For instance, the conservative lawmakers proposed raising Medicare’s eligibility age to be in line with the normal retirement age for Social Security, which currently is 67 for anyone born in 1960 or later, and then indexing it to life expectancy. But they would also raise the normal retirement age for Social Security, as well as trim benefits for higher-income earners.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, however, reiterated in remarks on Monday that “cuts to Medicare and Social Security are off the table” in the debt ceiling discussions. From CNN.
Biden and top congressional Democrats have not supported calls to defund the police or for a radical shift in police policy.
It’s worth noting that the slogan “defund the police” means different things to different activists – from the dissolution of police forces to partial reductions in funding.
Facts First: It’s obviously ridiculous to claim that there was world peace when Trump’s tenure ended, and calling the world “stable” is a subjective claim.
When Trump left the White House in 2021, there were still plenty of wars ongoing around the world – albeit not as many as under previous presidents, and very few of those conflicts directly involved American armed forces.
The war in Afghanistan was not ended by Trump, which was when Biden took office. Thousands of US troops were in the country when Biden took office, but he decided not to keep them there after he left office.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html
Crossing Borders in the War Between Syria, the U.S., and the Democratic Republic of Cuba: The Case of the Syrian-Biden Regime
The civil war in Syria was going on at a more isolated level than in the past. There was a war going on in the Tigray region. The drug war in Mexico led to deaths and disappearances.
Additionally, the war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region was still unresolved. The war began in 2014, but had settled into a “frozen conflict,” with Russian proxies occupying a large chunk of the eastern Donbas region, and Ukrainian troops dug into trenches. It got much worse when Russia invaded in February of 2022, after Biden had taken office. From CNN’s Marshall Cohen.
Those figures include repeat crossers and reflect shifting migration patterns. For example, there has been an increasing number of Cubans, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Haitians journeying to the US-Mexico border amid deteriorating conditions at home exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. The US is limited in removal of some of the nationalities, posing a challenge to the Biden administration.
According to the US Border Patrol, there were 2.2 million migrants encountered over a two-year period for the southern border.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/politics/fact-check-president-biden-state-of-the-union/index.html
The US Economy During the Covid Pandemic: Implications for the Future of Growth and the Industrialization of the 21st Century
This is partially true, but it lacks context. The US economy was bouncing back from the steepest job losses America had ever faced from the Covid shutdowns at the beginning of the pandemic.
America lost jobs in December 2020 and the country’s gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 3.9% in the fourth quarter. The Biden bill helped juice the economy in 2021, but it caused an inflation crisis due to supply chain disruptions caused by the war in Ukraine and caused global GDP to fall.