While we consider whether Biden’s foreign policy failures disqualify him from a second term, let us remember an area where he did succeed… domestic policy!
As expected, the deficit has come up as an election year issue once again. Last time I remember hearing about our nation’s debt was the lead up to the 2012 election, where Mitt Romney Republicans desperately painted the claim that Obama had spent too much money and that our growing debt was a liability. Once again in 2024, Republicans have turned to “THE DEFICIT!!!!” once again in an attempt to beat an incumbent Democrat.
Here’s the thing though– short of cutting nearly every government program upon which this country relies (let me remind you that our agriculture, oil, and healthcare sectors are propped up by government funding), the spending can’t be curbed. I have yet to meet a single Republican with a serious plan for reducing spending in a meaningful way, and indeed even Donald Trump has promised that he would not cut a single cent of social security. Regardless of Republican party bluster, voters on all sides of the aisle like being able to pay for hospital bills and doctor’s visits. Republican voters are just as dependent upon government assistance as everyone else, and as the years go by the social safety net is only going to become more entrenched in the lives of a majority of Americans. Of course, cutting the military budget or even holding the military industrial complex accountable to fraud is out of the question.
If we cannot cut enough programs to stop borrowing, then it stands that the best solution to the deficit is *GASP* paying down our debt with real money! Who would have thought that the massive tax breaks on America’s wealthiest earners would cause our country to become unable to pay for itself? Yet that is exactly what happened. Ever since the failure of Reagan’s “Trickle Down” theory, America has transformed from an industrial nation that could pay for itself to one that had to leverage debt in order to make ends meet. Biden’s solution is painfully obvious–if we resume proportional taxes on the ultra-rich, then we can pay down our debt and strengthen the programs that bring vitality to this nation.
Let’s cut through the BS and take the stakes at face value: Trump is pro-wealthy. He grew up with an inheritance and clearly has interests lie beyond helping Americans near the bottom of the ladder. His actions as president favored the highest wealth class in America, from massive tax breaks to obfuscating the very mechanisms in place to track where the ultra-rich spend their money. It is no wonder that Elon Musk has turned to the Republicans–they protect his money at the expense of ours. The richest men on the history of the Earth walk today, and they launch rockets into space while we work like dogs for a sliver of a sliver of the profits.
Biden’s stance on the economy drives a stark contrast with Trump’s. While Trump rails on and on about inflation with no clear answer for it, Joe speaks to the root cause– “Same size bag, put fewer chips in it.” When the oil companies raised prices at the pump, Joe Biden was quick to call them out on it. High pump prices did not reflect the robust success of the industry, which happened to be making record profits while producing record high quantities of fuel (this continues as of writing). Biden also actively calls out the rampant “shrinkflation” that has driven up price of goods post-pandemic. Companies with a stranglehold on production are raising prices and shrinking quantities for seemingly no other reason than the fact that they can. This is a more compelling argument than Trump’s. Trump says that “printing money” caused by pandemic stimulus (which he himself participated in) is responsible for inflation… No, it seems like companies just decided to raise prices because they could, and they have no reason to bring them down. Congress has refused to act on this phenomenon, leaving the job of tackling inflation to interest rate hikes that, again, hurt the people at the bottom disproportionately.
Palestinians being exterminated on our watch stinks, but at least Joe has an economic plan! Trump has none.