Failure of ‘Bidenomics’ is rankling Americans

OPINION:

Polls show Americans reject President Biden’s handling of the economy, and it’s not hard to see why. By just about any metric, people are worse off today than they were when Mr. Biden took office. Survey after survey shows voters voicing their dissatisfaction, but the Biden administration remains defiant.

Early this month, The New York Times released a poll finding that former President Donald Trump is thoroughly beating Mr. Biden, including in key swing states. According to the poll, if the next presidential election were held today, Mr. Trump would win with over 300 electoral votes.

This is not an outlier, with many other major polls showing Mr. Trump commanding a significant lead over Mr. Biden on the economy. A CBS poll showed an 8-point swing in favor of Mr. Trump compared with the 2020 election. Once again, the deciding factor for many people is the economy.

The question is, why are voters so down on the economy if the Biden administration is constantly touting its economic record? The simple answer: Facts are stubborn things.

Under Mr. Biden, people are demonstrably worse off, and the Biden administration’s own figures on inflation, jobs and falling household incomes prove it. Yet instead of acknowledging reality, the administration makes excuses while its media sycophants try and fail to gaslight Americans.

It’s like the initial weeks of the NFL season when commentators say a team is “better than its record.” Maybe the referees blew a game-altering call, or maybe a key player was out with an injury one week. Perhaps the team in question faced its most difficult opponents in the first few weeks of the season.

But the excuses, flukes and one-offs can last only so long before fans — and voters — stop buying them and get angry. (Trust us on the topic of angry sports fans: We’re both from Philadelphia.)

That’s what polls are showing: People are feeling the pain of “Bidenomics,” of the government spending, borrowing and printing too much money.

Since Mr. Biden took office, real earnings have plummeted as prices outpace wages: Inflation-adjusted weekly earnings are down about 5% since he took office. The drop in real earnings has piled on the sharp increase in borrowing costs over the last couple of years.

These two effects have cost the typical American family the equivalent of almost $7,400 in lost annual income. That’s more than a month’s pay for the median household. It’s even worse if you’re trying to buy a home today. The monthly mortgage payment on a median-price home has more than doubled under Mr. Biden and will cost a family an extra $13,000 every year for the same house.

At this point, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has estimated that homes are affordable in just five major metropolitan areas in the country, while rents are equally unaffordable.

Facing a cost-of-living crisis, it’s no wonder Americans are drowning in over $1 trillion of credit card debt as they struggle to make it from paycheck to paycheck, taking on multiple jobs at the highest level on record.

With such a gloomy backdrop, of course, people have soured on Bidenomics. With real earnings having fallen behind inflation for 27 of the last 31 months, voters have had enough.

This is feeding into the swing states, where the economy is the single most important issue. Nationwide, 83% of voters say the economy is “very important” in deciding their 2024 presidential vote.

Bloomberg asked swing voters whom they trust to handle the economy, and the results were a solid endorsement of Mr. Trump, who led by 10 points in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, by 15 points in Arizona and North Carolina, and by 20 points in Georgia.

Voters are rejecting the government takeover of their lives, the confiscation of their earnings, and the inflation and debt that come with it. Mr. Biden’s handlers have shown little willingness to fix things, instead relying on the media to spin and cover for them.

Voters aren’t buying the excuses anymore. Bidenomics is clearly a failure.

• E.J. Antoni is a public finance economist, and Peter St. Onge is the Mark A. Kolokotrones Fellow in Economic Freedom, at The Heritage Foundation.