It’s almost laughable that just two weeks ago Biden was using his weird whisper to boast about the secret of Bidenomics: “It’s working.”
For whom, exactly?
Not poor people. The poverty measure soared in the new report for every measurable group. Old people. Blacks. Hispanics. Whites. Children. Single mothers. The child poverty rate more than doubled.
As the chart shows, this is a complete and tragic reversal from the Trump years when poverty fell to its lowest level EVER recorded.
And Bidenomics has surely not worked for middle-income Americans. Median household income has fallen by nearly $3,000 since Trump came into office.
2) The Left Complains That Poverty Went Up Because We Aren’t Spending Enough on Welfare
The media will do nearly anything to cover for Biden’s screw-ups, and no better example than how major news outlets attempted to shield the White House from these new atrocious Census numbers on the economy.
This CNN headline was typical of how media spun the bad news yesterday:
The share of Americans, particularly children, in poverty rose significantly last year, in large part because Congress did not renewa COVID-19 pandemic enhancement to the child tax credit, according to Census Bureau data released Tuesday.
You get it? It’s not Biden’s fault. You have to read down the page to get to the discussion of Biden's inflation, which hit a high of 9.2% last year and ripped gaping holes in real family incomes.
So did the feds really skimp on welfare benefits in 2022?
You decide. Here are the official numbers from the House Budget Committee:
“In fiscal year 2022, the federal government spent $1.19 trillion on more than 80 different welfare programs. That represents almost 20% of total federal spending or $9,000 spent per American household.”
Question: How can the fools in Washington spend $1.2 trillion on anti-poverty programs and yet we still have nearly 40 million people in poverty?
Biden wanted to expand the child credit – a cash welfare payment based on how many children there are in a household. Again, we learn from the House Budget Committee: “This policy would cost taxpayers an astonishing cost of $429 billion. However, the policy included removal of work requirements permanently.”
We wouldn’t have a problem with expanding the child credit IF, IF, IF, it required 40 hours a week of work from the head of the household.
Dems say "hell no!" to that idea. We wonder how they think you can get families out of poverty if no one is working.
There is a real danger that one or more of the elements of Joe Biden's war on internal combustion vehicles will succeed. Between massive subsidies for buyers of electric vehicles, taxpayer-funded charging stations, direct payola to manufacturers to shift production lines, fuel economy rules that amount to EV mandates from the EPA and NHTSA, and the waiver letting California ban internal combustion vehicle sales... well, it's a lot.
The House is voting this week on a bill to block states from banning internal combustion vehicles. Such bans are an obvious restraint on interstate commerce, begging for federal preemption. Some Republicans are reportedly skittish, but they shouldn't be. Without cars and trucks – how can there be much interstate commerce at all?
We're pleased to announce that CTUP has joined a massive coalition of free market groups organized by our friends at the Institute for Energy Research to push back:
The Save Our Cars Coalition is a group of national and state-based organizations committed to safeguarding American consumers’ freedom to choose the car or truck that perfectly suits their needs.
4) Guns, Not Criminals Are the Latest Public Health Emergency
Have you noticed that every liberal policy is now a "public health emergency"? We predicted that COVID would create a precedent for government lockdowns, and this tactic would be used as an excuse to combat every latest “emergency” from climate change to exploding crime and murder rates.
So right on cue New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan-Grisham (a lockdown governor during Covid), has now invented a public safety exemption to the Second Amendment to suspend the concealed and open carry of handguns for 30 days to stop escalating crime rates in the state.
Except gun restrictions for law-abiding citizens don’t work. Never have. In almost every American city, you’ll find two things: strict gun control regimes and out-of-control violent crime. They co-exist because the politicians who run those cities (mostly Democrats) blame the violence on everything but their lax law enforcement policies – which now include serious efforts to defund the police.
Once again, the left refuses to follow the science.
President Biden loves Amtrak so much that last year he showered it with $4.4 billion in new money, a staggering four times it's average yearly funding. Another $60 billion is scheduled to flow to Amtrak in the next few years.
The money will subsidize Amtrak’s inflated union contracts as well as promised government-run bullet trains in Texas and California. California’s train, approved by voters 15 years ago, is only now reviewing preliminary bids for building a track between out-of-the-way Merced and Bakersfield, with no concrete plan to reach either Los Angeles or the Bay Area for another decade.
A private-sector approach will be unveiled in Florida this month. Brightline, which already runs trains between Miami and West Palm Beach, will now extend service to Orlando. Going up to 125 mph an hour, its trains will cut the journey time nearly in half to just over three hours. Tickets start at $79.
Brightline will also start construction this year on another route between the LA area and Las Vegas. Projected at speeds of almost 200 mph, the trip will take only two hours and 10 minutes. Some federal funding is involved, but Brightline is mostly privately funded and will have a profit motive.
There’s no law of economics or nature that says train service has to lose money. But that always happens when the government is in charge and runs it off the rails.
