Inflation and Energy May Sink Biden in November
The 46th president of the United States seems to be in denial regarding the disastrous results of his economic policies. He will soon pay the price.
With the United States congressional elections less than three months away, polls indicate that the Republican Party will surge to control of the US House of Representatives in November, hitting President Joe Biden’s hopes of re-election in 2024.
Of the 35 Senate seats being decided in 2022, 22 are already held by Republicans, so the Democrats may hold on to the Senate, where they have a wafer-thin margin, based on the Vice-President’s casting vote.
Surveys show that three major issues are on the minds of most Americans, regardless of their political leanings: inflation, rising crime rates and surging energy prices.
The downturn in the American economy is seen in the fact that US gross domestic product (GDP) declined in both the March and June quarters of this year.
Most economists view two successive quarters of contraction in the economy as evidence of a recession. There is nothing in the outlook to indicate that the US economy will turn around in the September quarter, so present trends are expected to continue.
Nevertheless, President Biden has been sugar-coating the figures, denying that the country is in recession, and pointing out that the US unemployment rate is at historically low levels.
Political Spin
But with annual inflation now running at over 9 per cent and energy costs surging to levels not seen for decades, while wages remain stagnant, the President’s attempt to spin the figures is unlikely to be successful.
Because Biden has now been in office for about 18 months, he cannot blame either the economic contraction or the surging inflation on his eccentric predecessor.
Polls show that only 36 per cent of Americans currently support President Biden’s handling of the job, a level lower than either of his predecessors at any time, while 57 per cent disapprove.
There is a sense that President Biden is in denial, failing to understand the pain that many American families are suffering as a result of his economic policies.
In response to the largest rise in consumer prices in 40 years, the President said that the 9.1 per cent inflation figure was “out of date”, because petrol prices had eased.
However, inflation is far more than just rising prices at the bowser. As in Australia, rising inflation is also the result of rising food prices, lack of affordable housing, rising interest payments on loans and mortgages, rising public debt, which leads to tax rises, and rising prices of clothing, motor vehicles and consumer goods.
Shifting Blame
As for the President’s claim that petrol prices are falling, they are still over 40 per cent higher than they were a year ago, and much of the blame rests with the Government itself, which has implemented a slew of measures to implement Biden’s green election promises that have cut US energy production.
Biden’s hostility to fossil fuels was apparent even before the 2020 election. “I guarantee you, we’re going to end fossil fuel,” Biden promised a student climate activist in 2019. “I am not going to cooperate with them,” he said, referring to the oil and gas industry.
As part of his commitment to cut fossil-fuel use to 40 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, he has banned oil and gas pipelines, and curbed drilling for oil and gas on federal lands and in the Gulf of Mexico.
Months after Russia’s President Vladimir Putin began his invasion of Ukraine, when it was obvious that the West would face an energy crisis because of the blockade on Russia, Biden’s Interior Department blocked a proposal to open up more than one million acres (400,000 hectares) of land in Alaska for oil and gas drilling.
Separately, Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency blocked plans to expand an oil refinery in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The result of limited supply has been an unprecedented rise in prices of oil, gas and coal. Biden’s response to the energy crisis was to blame the US oil and gas industry.
“At a time of war,” Biden wrote in an open letter on June 15, “high refinery profit margins being passed directly onto American families are not acceptable… companies must take immediate actions to increase the supply of gasoline, diesel, and other refined product.”
It seems everyone else is responsible for America’s surging inflation… except Joe Biden.
It is unlikely that the American people will take a similar attitude in November.
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Originally published in News Weekly. Photo: David Lienemann/Wikimedia Commons
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