I don’t know how much control a president has over inflation.
Not surprisingly, Republicans put all the blame on President Joe Biden. They say he spends too much money, but how aren’t the 2017 GOP tax cuts considered spending money – $2 trillion over 10 years. It’s just spending in the opposite direction – letting the rich and corporations keep money they would normally spend on taxes.
If a president could really control inflation, particularly a Democratic president, he would. No president wants high inflation on his watch.
On the other hand, I don’t think Republicans really care about inflation, especially if it occurs when a Democrat is in the White House. That’s because the overarching goal of the GOP is more money for the rich – through tax cuts and deregulation. If you think they really care about people who’re having trouble making ends meet due to higher prices you’re kidding yourself.
They’ll just blame the Democrats and rake in big campaign contributions and other perks from the wealthy and corporations who benefit from their policies.
So, who’s better for the economy, Joe Biden or Donald Trump? More than a dozen experts say it’s Biden, hands down.
A letter signed by 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists warns that Trump’s proposals “wouldn’t just fail to fix inflation – they would make matters worse,’ according to a story on the CNN website.
“The outcome of this election will have economic repercussions for years, and possible decades, to come,” the economists wrote. “We believe a second Trump term would have a negative impact on the U.S. economic standing in the world and a destabilizing effect on the U.S.’s domestic economy.”
“We all agree that Joe Biden’s economic agenda is vastly superior to Donald Trump’s,” they wrote.
While characterizing Trump’s proposed budgets as “fiscally irresponsible,” the economists praised Biden’s work on the economy, saying that his major investments in infrastructure, manufacturing, and climate will lower long-term inflationary pressure and ease the transition to clean energy.
Moody’s Analytics warned that if Republicans sweep into power in November, a mix of higher tariffs, fewer immigrants, and tax cut-fueled stimulus would cause inflation to reaccelerate, unemployment to climb above 5 percent, and the U.S. economy to head into a recession, CNN reported.
On the other hand, Moody’s found that if Biden wins and there’s a divided Congress, the Fed will start cutting interest rates, inflation will go back to normal, and the United States will avoid a recession.
Seems like an easy choice to me.
Back to the letter. It included these points:
*Trump approved $8.4 trillion of new 10-year borrowing during his term – nearly twice as much as Biden has so far, according to the fiscal watchdog group the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
*The Congressional Budget Office said Trump’s plan to extend his 2017 tax cuts would cost nearly $5 trillion. And he wants to cut corporate taxes, also. Cutting taxes would risk accelerating an economy which the Federal Reserve is working to slow down to fight inflation.
Not surprisingly, the Trump campaign attacked the economists, calling them “worthless out of touch Nobel prize winners.”
“Worthless out of touch Nobel prize winners?” Think how stupid and childish that is. Then think how it’s coming from the campaign of a four-time indicted, twice impeached, sexual assaulter, tax fraudster, convicted felon who was the most corrupt and unfit president in history.
You can read the CNN story here.
Here’s the baffling part to me: CNN reported that an average of polls gives Trump an 18-point lead over Biden on inflation and 13 points on the economy. Don’t they remember that Trump wrecked the economy, in large part because of his corrupt and incompetent response to the Covid pandemic, causing tens of thousands of people to die unnecessarily?
Here’s why: Republicans are skilled and willing liars, backed with a Right-wing media, such as Fox News, that regularly bombards its viewers with lie after lie in an attempt to damage Biden and the Democrats and boost Trump.
They’re just better at lying than the Democrats are at telling the truth, and the mainstream media, unlike their counterparts on the Right, are attempting to do balanced reporting, which seldom sticks like good old hysterical, lie-filled news and commentary.
It’s true that if you hear a lie over and over it can seem like the truth. Those folks in the Right-wing media silo are living, breathing examples of that.
So, what are Democrats to do. The only thing I can think of is they have to hit harder and more often. And they have to find ways for that message to reach as many people as possible, all over the political spectrum.
I wouldn’t call it easy, but it has to be done.
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