President Joe Biden is attempting to defend his "Bidenomics" against the inflation that Americans continue to witness under the leadership of his administration.
Biden's latest defense came in a statement that he posted on Thursday morning after the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) released the consumer price index report for the month of July 2023.
In his statement, Biden did two things: He attempted to put the consumer price index in a positive light and he attempted to defend his economic policies, generally referred to as "Bidenomics."
Whether Biden was successful in either regard is for you to decide.
Biden's statement begins with his attempt to spin the latest consumer price index report in his favor.
He said:
Annual inflation has fallen by around two-thirds since last summer, and inflation outside of food and energy has fallen to its lowest level in any three-month period since September 2021. We’ve made this progress while maintaining the broad strength of our economy: unemployment remains near record lows, a higher share of working-age Americans are working now than in 20 years, real wages for the average American worker are growing and are higher than they were before the pandemic — with lower-wage workers seeing the largest gains.
Then, Biden attempted to attribute this situation to "Bidenomics." "We’re growing the economy from the middle out and bottom-up, lowering costs for hardworking families, and making smart investments in America: that’s Bidenomics," Biden said.
Republican National Committee spokesman Jake Schneider provided a different take than Biden on the latest consumer price index report.
Schneider said:
Since Biden took office, prices are up by 16.9% and real wages are down by about 3%. That’s bad news for Americans, who already have little faith in Biden’s ability to handle the economy with competence.
In other words, although inflation has trended downward somewhat, Schneider, here, highlights the fact that overall - since Biden took over - inflation is still up, significantly. It's also worth pointing out that month-over-month inflation was 0.2% in July, and that year-over-year "core inflation" was 4.7%.
This latest consumer price index report comes just ahead of the anniversary of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. Biden continues to champion the legislation, while Biden's opponents continue to argue that the act is ironically named.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was recently confronted about Bidenomics by a CNN host. Victor Blackwell noted that polls continue to show that Americans, by and large, are not happy with Biden's economics.
Jean-Pierre said:
Well, here’s the thing: Bidenomics is indeed working when – when we say that — you look at the data, right? Cost is going down, right? We think about inflation. When you think about wages going up, that is Bidenomics. Look, the president has always believed — not just as president, but as vice president, as a senator, that we need to build an economy that is building from the bottom up, middle out, right? We need to make sure we leave no one behind. He came from a middle-class family. You heard him talking about growing up in Scranton, what that means. He understands what the American people have gone — go through, right, sitting at your kitchen table once a month trying to figure out how to pay those bills. So, this is why we talk about it in this way because this is what he believes.
Are you convinced? We are not.
