Apparently, The New Yorker isn’t confident President Joe Biden is capable of selling his atrocious economic policies on his own, so it has chosen to offer a propagandist’s helping hand by acting as his speech writer.
New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy’s March 5 piece of drivel — “What Biden Should Say About the Economy During the State of the Union” — was literally a script written in Biden's voice to provide the president a template for how to effectively hoodwink the public into believing Biden’s economy to be anything other than the disaster it has been.
“With the President’s economic approval rating standing at just forty per cent, it’s imperative for him to highlight some of his substantive achievements and talk about the future,” Cassidy clamored in the sub-headline. But those “substantive achievements” Cassidy tried to highlight involved butchering the facts, because, after all, that’s the only way anyone can make some sort of defense of the stroke of economic bone-headedness that is Bidenomics. "Good evening, my fellow-Americans. Since I last spoke to you from this hallowed chamber of democracy, thirteen months ago, the U.S. economy has continued its strong recovery from the coronavirus pandemic," began the preachy speech. Cassidy must have realized the ridiculousness of what he was doing, because he prefaced the entire mock speech with "apologies for my lame efforts to capture [Biden's] folksy" syntax. Talk about cringe.
Cassidy, writing in Biden’s voice, kicked off his spin by rolling out uncontextualized data on economic growth: “But, far from slumping, the economy expanded at a faster rate in 2023 than it did in the previous year: 2.5 per cent, compared with 1.9 per cent. In the first three years of my Presidency, inflation-adjusted G.D.P. growth has averaged 3.4 per cent.”
He even had Biden trying to spin his government-spending fueled GDP growth as comparable to that of the Trump administration: “I don’t want to belabor the point, but that compares with an average annual growth of less than one per cent under the other guy.”
Cassidy also had Biden ludicrously trotting out his illusory record on things like inflation — despite prices being 17.6 percent higher than when he first took office in large part due to his inflationary spending policies — the unemployment rate, which has effectively been rendered meaningless in light of the millions that left the labor force. But “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs,” propagandized Cassidy.
But what Cassidy’s mock speech left out is that much of this growth is being fueled by an explosion of government spending and tackling an ungodly level of debt, as unveiled by several economists.
Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni pointed out in a Feb. 24 X post that Biden had “overseen an explosion of the federal debt by more than $6.6 trillion, while nominal GDP has only increased $5.9 trillion - they're borrowing to create the illusion of ‘growth,’ and getting only 89 cents on the dollar…” Indeed, the national debt, currently barreling past $34 trillion, is now increasing by $1 trillion every 100 days, according to CNBC. But Cassidy didn’t even bother bringing up the debt.
This White House has overseen an explosion of the federal debt by more than $6.6 trillion, while nominal GDP has only increased $5.9 trillion - they're borrowing to create the illusion of "growth," and getting only 89 cents on the dollar... pic.twitter.com/M38r6OfxEz
— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) February 25, 2024
Bolstering Antoni’s point, First Trust Portfolios LP Chief Economist Brian Wesbury emphasized the extent to which leftist economists were not accounting for government spending when spouting off about Biden’s so-called “growth:”
Economists are not focusing enough on how much government contributed to growth in 2023. Probably half of the 3.1% real GDP growth in 2023 came from government. The charts below show how the private sector boosted jobs and incomes in 2022, but it was government in 2023.
Economists are not focusing enough on how much government contributed to growth in 2023. Probably half of the 3.1% real GDP growth in 2023 came from government. The charts below show how the private sector boosted jobs and incomes in 2022, but it was government in 2023. pic.twitter.com/pUy5qal9nx
— Brian Wesbury (@wesbury) February 29, 2024
Regarding Biden’s record on jobs, it's proven to be nothing but a paper tiger. The unemployment rate as it now stands, as Antoni pointed out, has become a “facade” because it's effectively the byproduct “of over 5 million people missing from the labor force.” But this little factoid didn’t get in the way of Cassidy harping on about how for the “past twelve months job growth has also remained reassuringly robust.”
Liberal news outlet Seeking Alpha also noted that the labor force participation rate showed signs of plateauing at 62.5 percent, which is still less than the 63 percent figure posted pre-pandemic. But Cassidy actually had Biden engage in pontificating about the virtues of work: “Over the years, you’ve probably heard me say how my father used to always tell me that a job is about more than a paycheck—it’s about your dignity, your respect.” In the words of The Economist in a May 2023 story, “Joe Biden is more responsible for high inflation than for abundant jobs.”
Cassidy clearly didn’t have any “respect” for facts, as he had his SOTU script pushing Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus monstrosity and his climate change-obsessed Inflation Reduction Act as economic miracles that helped “boost the economy and make it stronger for the longer term.” Yes, Cassidy actually wrote that, using these pieces of legislation to shore up Biden as the economic whiz kid of the manufacturing sector. “Last year, American manufacturers raised their spending on new plants and other facilities by more than sixty per cent,” Cassidy claimed . The timing of this could not have been worse.
Notably, Just four days before Cassidy’s mock script went live on The New Yorker website, Bloomberg News reported that “US Manufacturing Gauge Drops as Industry Struggles for Momentum.” The Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) gauge for manufacturing fell to 47.8 in February, faster than expected.
To put that in perspective, “A level below 50 indicates shrinking activity, and the figure was weaker than all but one estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists.” Measures of production and factory employment also fell to “the lowest levels since July.” ISM wrote in a summary that the faltering gauge was a setback for the optimists who were hopeful that U.S manufacturing would finally “crawl out of its lengthy period of contraction.” Barron’s magazine concluded that the new reading meant the U.S. manufacturing sector “contracted for 16 consecutive months.”
Hang it up, Cassidy.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact The New Yorker at (800) 444-7570 and demand it quit carrying water for Biden’s atrocious economic policies.
