On Thursday evening, President Joe Biden will deliver his election year State of the Union address. A flurry of new opinion polls released over the weekend highlighted the major challenges he faces in his bid for re-election: concerns about his age, the southern border, the Israel-Hamas war and the economy. The RealClearPolitics polling average currently shows him trailing Donald Trump by two points in a head-to-head matchup, and 2.8 points when third-party candidates are included. What's particularly troubling for the president is that he isn't getting much credit for what is in many respects an impressive economic record, given that many voters are still focused on the rising cost of living. According to the poll average, only 40.2 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the economy, while 57.4 percent oppose it. To improve his electoral prospects, Biden urgently needs to turn these numbers around. The State of the Union provides him with a much-needed opportunity to speak to the American people about his economic record. Here, with apologies for my lame attempts to grasp his vernacular syntax, is a suggestion as to how he might go about it:
Good evening, my fellow Americans. Since I last spoke to you from this hallowed hall of democracy thirteen months ago, the U.S. economy has continued its strong recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. This time last year, many economists were predicting a recession after the Federal Reserve decided to raise interest rates to reduce inflation. But the economy did not collapse in 2023, but grew faster than in the previous year: 2.5 percent compared to 1.9 percent. During the first three years of my presidency, inflation-adjusted GDP growth averaged 3.4 percent. I don't want to elaborate on the point, but in comparison, the other company's average annual growth is less than one percent.
And here's another comparison you may have heard me make before: Economically, the United States outperforms the rest of the developed world. Don't take my word for it. Ask the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a group of economic experts from different countries working in a beautiful, leafy part of Paris. According to the OECD's latest global economic report, released a few weeks ago, the US economy grew significantly faster than the rest of the G7 bloc in 2023, with only Japan even coming close. The OECD predicts a repeat for 2024: the USA will grow three and a half times as fast as the euro area and twice as fast as Japan. If there was an Olympic gold medal for recovering from the pandemic, Team USA would get it.
Back home: Employment growth also remained encouragingly robust over the past twelve months. Between January 2023 and January 2024, employers increased their payrolls by more than 2.9 million. Thanks to the strong demand for workers, the unemployment rate is only 3.7 percent. In fact, it's been below four percent for about two years, which hasn't happened since the Beatles were together and I graduated law school and wanted to work as a public defender in Wilmington.
Jobs, jobs, jobs. Over the years, you've probably heard me say that my dad always told me that a job is about more than just a salary – it's about your dignity, your respect. Well, thanks to the strength of the job market, more and more Americans from historically disadvantaged groups have been able to find some of that dignity and respect — and a steady paycheck. As of September 2022, the unemployment rate for Black Americans is at or below six percent. Since the Department of Labor began keeping records more than fifty years ago, it has been the lowest it has been in some time. The unemployment rate among Hispanics is just five percent. Among Americans with disabilities, the figure is 6.6 percent, down from 12 percent when I took office in January 2021.
I do not claim that I or any of my Democratic colleagues deserve full credit for these developments. Much of the credit goes to the enterprising Americans who launched nearly 5.5 million new businesses last year — another record — and the countless hard-working Americans who have entered or re-entered the workforce since the pandemic abated . I have always said: No one can match the American worker for enterprise and hard work. No one.
However, healthy economic growth requires a partnership between the private sector and the public sector. And my administration, together with Congress, has taken a series of unprecedented steps to stimulate and strengthen the economy longer term, including the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and the CHIPS Act. What impact did these legislative proposals have? Well, one way to assess the results is to look at the manufacturing sector. Last year, American manufacturers increased their spending on new plants and other facilities by more than sixty percent. According to Commerce Department statisticians, that was the biggest increase since Harry Truman gave them hell from the Oval Office.
Of course, we must balance these positive developments with the fact that too many Americans still struggle to pay their bills, put food on the table and get ahead in life. We all know that the costs of many essential household items – from groceries to car insurance to rent – have risen in recent years and continue to rise. High inflation is a global phenomenon, but that is no consolation to American families who are having to change their buying habits, cancel vacations or postpone their plans to find a new home.
Fortunately, the inflation rate has fallen sharply over the last year and a half: it is now 3.1 percent. Prices of some items that shot up in 2021-22, including eggs, heating oil, gasoline and used cars, have fallen slightly, although they are still too high. Plus, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, hundreds of thousands of seniors now pay much less for insulin than they once did. Under the old system, the average out-of-pocket cost for Medicare recipients was about $63 per month; today the cap is $35. For seniors on fixed incomes, this is an important cost savings, and the savings aren't just limited to Medicare. In last year's State of the Union report, I called for extending the $35 a month cap to all Americans, regardless of age or insurance status. I am pleased to report that earlier this year a number of large pharmaceutical companies adopted this policy, reducing their prices in some cases by more than seventy percent. That is good news!
But we still have a lot of work to do. Prices for many everyday goods are still too high. And I want to assure the American public that if I am re-elected, my administration will continue to do everything we can to reduce the cost burden on hard-working Americans. In some cases we rely on existing legislation. For example, starting in 2025, total prescription drug costs will be capped at two thousand dollars per year for all Medicare recipients. We will also use other tactics, such as forcing companies that have padded their profits to pass savings on to their customers and using antitrust laws to boost competition. Just last week, the Federal Trade Commission blocked a merger between two major supermarket chains with a lawsuit, saying it would lead to higher prices for consumers. This is unacceptable. We will also look for new ways to address some of the major long-term challenges facing the country, such as: B. the affordability of college for low- and middle-income students; narrowing the racial wealth gap; and helping first-time buyers purchase a home.
So there is a lot of work to be done, and I understand why so many people are telling pollsters that the economic recovery has not reached them. Finally, however, I would like to mention some good news on this front. In December, a Wall Street Journal poll found that only 34 percent of Americans believed their personal financial situation had moved in the right direction over the past year. In a new Journal poll released Sunday, that number rose to 43 percent, an increase of nine percentage points in two months. Of course I would like the number to rise well above fifty percent, but the trend is in the right direction. My fellow Americans, the hard work of the last few years is starting to pay off. Let's finish the job. ♦
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