This past weekend on Saturday Night Live’s ‘Weekend Update’ host Colin Jost took aim at President Joe Biden, mocking one Biden failure after another, after another. Biden “might be more of an acquired taste,” joked Jost to a bevy of laughter. For a media enterprise that more typically bends over backward to paint Democrat politicians in a positive light, this a big deal. It is also a testament to just how resounding a failure the administration of President Joe Biden has been over the last year.
January 20, 2022 marks the one year anniversary of Joe Biden’s inauguration and Americans are giving him record low approval ratings on everything from his handling of the economy and COVID-19 to his promise to unite the Country and reduce the vitriol in American Politics.
Looking back over the last year, we can see why Americans have soured quickly on our president. On his first day in office, President Biden advertised to the world that our southern border would be wide open. He stopped border wall construction in its tracks. He resumed catch-and-release and suspended cooperation between ICE and local authorities, giving over 2 million illegal aliens a free pass to enter and stay in the United States. Not surprisingly, America is now reaping what Biden has sowed. Illegal border crossings are at record levels, sparking humanitarian crises and exacerbating public health challenges with no end in sight.
The first significant piece of legislation Biden urged Democrats in Congress to pass was the $1.9 Trillion spending package that economists like Democrat Larry Summers warned would cause inflation. It has; inflation rates are hitting their highest levels in 40 years. Americans’ family budgets are being squeezed as they struggle to deal with Bidenflation at the grocery store, gas station, car dealerships, as well as skyrocketing rent and home prices. Now, completely tone deaf, the Biden Administration is looking to double-down on this failure as they try to force through the ‘Build Back Broke’ radical spending package which makes earlier bills look small by comparison. And the economists find themselves compelled to issue yet another warning to avoid excessive government spending which will merely pour gasoline on the inflation fire.
The President and his supporters have tried to argue that supply chain disruptions are putting upward pressure on prices rather than out of control spending, However, they miss the point that the supply chain crisis is also a failure of Democrats’ own making. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden and the Democrats have forcibly shut down large swaths of our economy, endorsing restrictive policies on people and businesses which have thrown wrench after wrench into our global ‘just-in-time’ economy. These supply chain shortages, along with the President’s unconstitutional vaccine mandates, have resulted in labor shortages, record high prices, insane shipping times, and ‘Out of Stock’ messages which wreaked havoc on Christmas wishlists. They have also forced farmers and small-business owners to scramble to find supplies, replenish inventory, and find enough workers to actually meet their customers’ needs.
Another direct hit to American families, farms and small businesses is skyrocketing energy prices. On his first day in office, President Biden declared war on domestic energy. He killed the Keystone XL Pipeline, suspended oil and natural gas leasing on federal lands and instructed his Administration to stop issuing permits for energy production. The result was immediate – a 50% increase in the price of gas, oil at seven year highs, and the cost to heat your home this winter is expected to jump by more than 30%. When it comes to energy, the only thing worse than the President’s plan to eliminate domestic energy production and drive up energy prices, was his response to the public backlash – he asked Russia and OPEC to produce more oil and sell it to the United States, sending billions of dollars and thousands of jobs overseas.
President Biden has also weakened America on the international stage, from Afghanistan, to China and Russia. America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan was handled poorly from concept to execution. Biden chose to withdraw from Afghanistan in the worst way possible, evacuating our troops before evacuating all our citizens, and creating one of the worst foreign policy disasters of our lifetimes. Although Biden said there was no way to foresee the sudden collapse of Afghan forces, he was in fact warned about that very likelihood by the Special Inspector General months in advance. Many Americans are still trapped in the Taliban-controlled country. The State Department has estimated that approximately 300 U.S. citizens remain. Meanwhile, China is moving in, taking advantage of our hasty exit to work with the Taliban. Now China appears set to secure another notch in their Belt & Road initiative and is regaining access to massive deposits of strategically important rare earth minerals. After watching the Biden Administration’s incompetence in Afghanistan, both China and Russia have stepped up their aggression towards Ukraine and Taiwan, creating a much less stable world.
As we look back at the past year, we would hope that the President and Democrats in control of Congress would realize that their agenda is not working for the American people. Unfortunately, it appears that they are ready to double down on the disaster which was 2021. From their attempts to break centuries of Senate tradition and end the filibuster to enact a federal takeover of elections and enacting the progressives’ Build Back Better Agenda to raising taxes on millions of American families and borrowing trillions of dollars from China and future generations to spend on social programs and (further) raise inflation, President Biden is on a quest which will completely shut down the American economy.
The list of bad marks for President Biden’s first year could go on and on – putting unions first and parents last in education, promoting censorship by Big Tech, record-breaking crime waves, eroding voter confidence, and a surplus of incompetence. Heading into the critical midterm election cycle, the contrast between the Biden agenda and what Republicans offer could not be more stark. The American people know that the Republican agenda will rein in excessive federal spending to reduce inflation, strengthen our economy, and increase our standing on the world stage. For each and every one of the crises which President Biden has created, Republicans have offered bold solutions to recover from these predictable failures and restore confidence, not just in American institutions, but in the American Dream. That restoration begins with the November elections, because America cannot afford too many years like the one President Biden and the Democrats just gave us.
Michael Whatley is the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party
