Does Biden Regret Expressing Regret?

We live in an age marked by sharp differences of opinion between highly credentialed elites and average working stiffs. But both academic experts and rank-and-file voters seem to have reached a consensus that Joe Biden’s economic program has not restrained consumer prices. This consensus may also include Mr. Biden.

Josh Boak and Paul Wiseman report for the Associated Press:

Even President Joe Biden has some regrets about the name of the Inflation Reduction Act: As the giant law turns 1 on Wednesday, it’s increasingly clear that immediately curbing prices wasn’t the point.

While price increases have cooled over the past year — the inflation rate has dropped from 9% to 3.2% — most economists say little to none of the drop came from the law.

“I can’t think of any mechanism by which it would have brought down inflation to date,” said Harvard University economist Jason Furman, who added that the law could eventually help to lower electricity bills.

Alex Arnon, an economic and budget analyst for the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton Budget Model, offers a similar assessment.

“We can say with pretty strong confidence that it was mostly other factors that have brought inflation down,’’ he said. “The IRA has just not been a significant factor.’’

When the law passed a year ago, the Penn Wharton Budget Model and the Congressional Budget Office were among the many credentialed outfits forecasting that the massive tax-and-spending bill would not provide any meaningful inflation relief. But amid surging inflation Democrats figured that “Inflation Reduction Act” sounded good.

As for Mr. Biden’s regrets, unfortunately it’s not clear that he understands his mistakes. He discussed the subject last week in a rambling and incoherent speech at a Utah fund raiser. He seems to have admitted that the law was not about inflation reduction right before suggesting that it actually was.

Here’s the section of the White House transcript in which he addressed the Inflation Reduction Act:

I wish I hadn’t called it that, because it has less to do with reducing inflation than it does to do with dealing with providing for alternatives that generate economic growth. And so, we’re now in a situation where if you take a look at what we’re doing in the Inflation Reduction Act, we’re literally reducing the cost of people being able to make their — meet their basic needs.

Any of the well-heeled attendees at the fundraiser who were hoping for a clarification were unfortunately disappointed. Here’s what Mr. Biden said next, according to the official transcript:

And, for example, we’re in a situation where we’re — and the — about the Medicare prices, but — well, I’m — I’m going to go on too long for you.

But, look, some of my friends on the other team — and I met someone today who said, “I’m a Republican. I’m voting for you. I have a program; I used to be on (inaudible).” And now he said, “I’m — I’m voting for you.” I w- — I didn’t ask why. (Laughter.)

Any rate, during this process, I’ve been able to expand the amount — I made a commitment that one third of all the land and waters of America will be in conservation by the time I left office — one third. It’s about 18 percent now. (Applause.)

But what’s going on is that in the process of doing this, I’m told of all this incredible amount of money we spend. But guess what? I reduced the debt $1 trillion 700 billion — (applause) — more than any president has ever — ever, ever — in American history.

So much to applaud, right? Mr. Biden’s titanic falsehood about debt reduction is one for the record books. According to the Biden Treasury Department, total public debt outstanding has increased by nearly $5 trillion since the day Joe Biden took office. In contrast to his bogus claim of reducing debt, It’s more accurate to say that Mr. Biden is the most fiscally reckless president in the history of the United States.

Could the applause have been sarcastic? One would have thought that even those who didn’t immediately comprehend the scale of the Biden deception would have wondered why, if he was actually reducing debt, he had to spend much of this year demanding a debt limit increase from Congress.

Perhaps confused reception guests were too busy puzzling over his conflicting statements on inflation or his earlier claim that his 2021 American Rescue Plan “got the economy moving again,” which is contradicted by the GDP statistics published by his own Commerce Department. They show fast growth during the quarter he signed the measure, and much slower growth since.

In any case, while the president seems confused about whether his policies have been directed to inflation reduction, both academics and blue-collar workers seem to agree that they haven’t.

This is why Democrats like Ruy Teixera are worried about 2024. They see their party embracing unpopular social policies in part because of a misplaced confidence that Mr. Biden will receive credit from voters for the economy.

Mr. Teixera writes at his Liberal Patriot Substack column:

The fact is that the cultural left in and around the Democratic Party has managed to associate the party with a series of views on crime, immigration, policing, free speech, and of course race and gender that are quite far from those of the median working class voter (including the median nonwhite working-class voter)...

They do believe, however, that they have an ace in the hole that can overcome these liabilities with working class voters: “Bidenomics.” The idea is that the improving economic outlook, especially lowered inflation, plus the jobs generated by the Democrats’ various spending bills, will endear these voters to the Democrats and allow them to overlook the other things they don’t like about the party and the Biden administration.

So far, this approach has decidedly not worked. As many outlets have reported, voters remain deeply unhappy about the economy and unconvinced by the Bidenomics pitch. In the most recent CNN poll, working-class voters give Biden just a 32 percent approval rating on the economy and a 24 percent rating on handling inflation; about four-fifths characterize the current economy as poor. And in the most recent CBS poll, most hadn’t heard much about Bidenomics and of those who had the term was mostly associated with higher inflation.

Who’s applauding now?

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James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival” and also the co-author of “Borrowed Time: Two Centuries of Booms, Busts and Bailouts at Citi.”

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