OPINION:
President Biden and Democrats are outdoing history in the disasters they have brought to foreign affairs and to the American middle class who live by the rules, struggle with family budgets and work hard.
Former President Donald Trump handed Mr. Biden a number of domestic and international victories. The Biden team gleefully reversed them into today’s disasters while the president lied. “America is back,” he claimed.
The recent Iran-backed Hamas brutality against Israel is just one example.
I draw a distinction between America’s heartland and Washington Democrats like those who inhabit the Biden world. They got rich from the government and are protected from reality by our city’s economic bubble of stock trades, lobbying, public relations work and federal contracts. They dabble in left-wing ideas for controlling the peasants as their chauffeurs shop for groceries.
The federal government, then and now, has a knack for causing disasters.
The Great Depression was the handiwork of a hapless, secretive Federal Reserve. The Fed started raising interest rates for no real reason other than the idiots thought the Roaring ’20s were too loud. Curtailing the money supply for banks sent the U.S. into a downturn.
When this sank in on Wall Street, an overvalued stock market crashed. This brought on a bank panic. Businesses and people could not get money.
This was the time for the Fed to act boldly to shore up banks with loans. A meek Fed did nothing. It let the banks fail. And the Great Depression was off and running.
Economists have established that the U.S. money supply shrank by a whopping 30% from 1928 to 1933. This meant too few dollars were chasing goods and services, which brought on a horrible case of deflation.
Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke put the central bank’s man-made disaster into a quick talking point.
“Regarding the Great Depression … we did it. We’re very sorry. … We won’t do it again,” Mr. Bernanke said.
Mr. Bernanke ruled the Fed in 2008, when he inherited another federal government-triggered collapse that struck middle-class America: the Great Recession.
In 1995, President Bill Clinton pressed banks to relax mortgage lending standards through a new Housing and Urban Development law that made it easier to buy a home. Lax credit, no down payment, interest-only payments — all meant more homeownership.
Unfortunately, there lies the creek that fed Disaster River.
You will never guess what happened to the greedy banks that went hog-wild. When full monthly mortgage payments came due, people started walking away from their homes.
The ripple effect shocked Wall Street. Mortgage-backed securities collapsed in value, taking investment firms with them.
Surprise, surprise: Guess who got a lot of the blame? Yep. The Fed and Chairman Alan Greenspan, who left his post in 2006.
“Fed Shrugged as Subprime Crisis Spread,” said a New York Times 2007 headline in a slap at Mr. Greenspan.
In 2021, President Biden took office and quickly broke records for ignoring history and ushering in government-created disasters.
Inflation
He inherited a country on an upswing after contending with a deadly virus from China. COVID-19 was receding. Government-closed businesses were opening back up. The economy grew by more than 30% in the third quarter of 2020, 6% in the fourth and was surging an added 6% in 2021. The energy market stood self-sufficient. You told your children that inflation was in their history books.
Mr. Biden and the Democrats wrote a new chapter. They passed a massive $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill that wasn’t needed unless the need was to reward party loyalists with our tax dollars by the billions.
Energy
Mr. Biden wrecked the energy markets. Nothing fetches more dollars from major donors than for a Democratic president to condemn fossil fuels. The billionaires consume lots of oil and gas themselves. It’s the peasants who must suffer. Mr. Biden sprung into action. He shut down a major pipeline and made all sorts of land off-limits for exploration.
Oil spiked. A gallon of regular doubled in D.C. to $5. Groceries. Some items doubled in price.
Under the Trump’ administration, inflation sat at a soothing 1.2%. Mr. Biden’s energy fiasco, coupled with Democrats’ irresponsible gluttony, sent inflation to a 40-year high.
Southern border
Next, Mr. Biden set his sights on the southern border, which Mr. Trump had worked to make the most secure in decades. Mr. Biden came up with a plan to open our country to anyone who drops by, effectively turning over our immigration to the most murderous, evil mobs in our hemisphere — the Mexican drug cartels.
Who knows how many murderers, drug dealers and their drugs, terrorists, and slave and sex traffickers the cartels have maneuvered to the border. The count today stands at 7 million illegals.
Urban crime
Next, the Democrats created a crisis in our cities. They spawned the “defund the police” movement that wrecked law enforcement and encouraged criminals.
George Soros, the Democrats’ top donor, gave millions to elect prosecutors who let criminals go free.
The result: more thefts, murders, carjackings. Boarded-up stores whose owners gave up. Some shoplifters say they are collecting “reparations.”
Vladimir Putin
Mr. Trump isolated the murderous dictator. He cut off his prized Nord Stream 2 gas line. He pulled out of two military treaties because Mr. Putin was cheating. He refused to extend the strategic arms START treaty. All were messages to Commissar Putin: Don’t mess with America.
Mr. Biden quickly kowtowed to Mr. Putin. He opened the undersea pipeline and extended START without conditions. Then he botched the Afghanistan retreat. All were new messages to Mr. Putin: Mr. Biden is weak.
Iran and its terrorists
Mr. Trump put the Iranian mullahs in a box. He pulled out of the Obama nuclear deal, imposed sanctions to restrict oil trading and stopped funding the Palestinian terror money flow, which leaks to Hamas, today’s brutal invaders of Israel.
A feckless Mr. Biden reversed all of that. And to boot, on the anniversary of Sept. 11, he freed up $6 billion in Iranian money, which gave them the cash liquidity to spend more on its chief objective — murderous terrorism — including its client Hamas.
There you have it. Iran, Russia, gasoline, inflation, the border, crime-ridden cities — thank Mr. Biden and the Democrats. If they had just left things alone, we would all be leading better lives today.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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