Biden administration sounds the alarm
It’s reasonable to think that something called “Make America Great Again” would involve a sincere attempt to grow a solid economy. Indeed, when Donald Trump spoke at the New York Economic Club in September 2016, he announced a “plan for American economic revival,” describing it as a “bold, ambitious, forward-looking plan to massively increase jobs, wages, incomes and opportunities for the people of our country.”
Talk is cheap, however. Not surprisingly, given Trump’s bluster and renowned ineffectiveness in creating anything positive, the reality of MAGA has proven to be a poison to the U.S. economy in so many ways. This is a fact that we keep learning more about from different sources as time goes on.
On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told the National Association for Business Economics that when she and President Biden took office in January 2021, “we inherited a financial stability apparatus at Treasury that had been decimated.” As just one example, Yellen recalled how she found the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) team to be “less than one third of the size it was five years prior,” and “the analysis team had been eliminated.”
Although Trump has been out of office for over two years, MAGA continues to pose a dire threat to the economy. The Biden administration is officially sounding the alarm, releasing 51 state and territory fact sheets that highlight the “devastating impacts of extreme MAGA House Republicans’ reckless plan to gut critical support for hardworking families while delivering massive tax breaks for the super wealthy and big corporations.”
The fact sheets are chock-full of examples that are as broad as they are damning. In Georgia, the MAGA House Republican plan would, among many other things, jeopardize air safety by shutting down at least six control towers, remove food assistance for as many as 425,000 people, and increase college costs for 219,600. The MAGA plan would wreak havoc in Pennsylvania, denying admission to opioid treatment for 1,600, cutting 310 rail safety inspections, and more.
You can peruse the 51 fact sheets to see the breathtaking and widespread economic damage that MAGA would inflict. By contrast, President Biden’s budget not only invests in America, lowers costs for families, and strengthens Medicare and Social Security, but it also reduces the deficit by nearly $3 trillion over 10 years. Rather than “delivering massive tax breaks for the super wealthy and big corporations,” Biden’s plan makes sure that anyone earning less than $400,000 per year will not pay “a penny more in new taxes.”
Ironically, MAGA is a happy catchphrase that has nothing to do with making America great. The Biden administration has been reversing the economic damage that MAGA caused under Trump while now working hard to protect the economy against House Republicans who wish to impose their upside-down MAGA values on the nation. MAGA was and still is bad news—the fact sheets speak for themselves.
Ron Leshnower is a lawyer and the author of several books, including President Trump’s Month