An Unfair Evaluation of Biden’s Economic Policies
2024 07 23
Going against the sensible precept of judging “against the alternative rather than against the Almighty,” this is a clearly “unfair” evaluation of Biden’s economic policies. They are, of course, the policies of the whole administration/party vibe of the 2021-2024 period; Biden is not personally responsible for each and every one. [An element of the unfairness of this post is NOT to evaluate Biden’s _foreign_ policy which would be hard to improve.]
The top line is that Biden governed too much as if he were the executor of a Sanders-Warren Administration. He was chosen as the candidate because he was NOT the Sanders Warren wing. The rule in politics is to move to the center after securing the nomination, and more so on being elected; Biden did the opposite. He did not govern as if 2024 depended on 60,000 swing voters in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania
It goes without saying [why does one have to say “it goes without saying” when it goes without saying?] that Biden was the proper choice in 2020 (even before the attempted coup on January 6, 2021) and would have been in 2024.
Particular errors in no particular order (and without regard to whether they were _political errors_ or not)
1. Initial and lingering hostility to fossil fuel production and transportation projects (over and above using a cost of net CO2 emissions in the CBA of the project), examples being opposition to the West Virginia gas pipeline to New England and the “pause” of approving East Coast LNG export projects. The way to reduce CO2 emissions is from the demand side of fossil fuels, not restricting the supply. [https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/why-not-lng-exports]
2. Failure to take credit for increasing US output of petroleum and, even more, natural gas that displaces coal and Russian gas.
3. Failure to do everything possible under the statutes to facilitate skilled, educated, and entrepreneurial immigration (including Afghan employees of the USG).
4. Failure to provide resources to the border to dispatch asylum claims expeditiously without the need to allow temporary residence while claimants await hearings. Valid claimants should not have to wait so long and invalid claimants should be deported. If, after a large noisy effort that was not politically possible, then Biden should have done in 2021 what he did in 2024.
5. Public statements seeming to claim credit for the fast recovery from COVID and low unemployment. Likewise, statement that seemed to claim credit for the reduction in inflation (but thereby accepting some blame) were mistaken. Recession and recovery, aggregate employment and unemployment are the Fed’s job. Specifically, the 2021 ARP (American Rescue Plan) package should not have been discussed as “stimulus.” [https://substack.com/home/post/p-145235739?source=queue]
6. Failure to make the child allowance of the ARP permanent.
7. Failure to restructure unemployment insurance as national benefit offering a benefit in proportion to lost income.
8. Not doing more and making more noise about what _was_ done in support of improved policing and prosecution. For example, creating a National Police Academy as much as a center of policy research on crime control as actual training.
9. Failure to reform the legislation of regulatory agencies, especially FDA, CDC, EPA, and NRC to require them to _use_ cost benefit analysis. [OK, start. This is an Augean labor.]
10. Larding CHIPS and Science Act, Infrastructure Investment, and Jobs Act (IIJA), and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) with extraneous requirements. [Anything worth requiring for these beneficiaries should be worth subsidizing for all firms.]
11. Not strengthening ACA so as to attract the lowest income employees away from the employment linked system.
12. Student debt relief not targeted at hardship/borderline fraud (like Trump U!).
13. Failure to conduct an inquiry into COVID response [https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/covid-policy-errors]
14. In IRA, subsidizing _investment in_ CO2 reducing technologies rather than output of those technologies and not limiting the subsidy to the equivalent of the (alas, not yet politically feasible) tax on net CO2 emissions. [https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/market-forces-are-not-enough-to-halt]
15. Industrial policy with trade restrictions. Any industry worth promoting should be competitive internationally. Import restrictions on EVs are inimical to that
16. Failure to remove Trump-era trade restrictions not carefully aimed at reducing strategic dependence on Chinese and Chinese-interdictable suppliers.
17. Not creating an infrastructure bank that would apply a cost benefit analysis of projects. Part of the advantage of this would be to de-bunch and de-politicize spending that happens with “infrastructure bills.” (And assuming that the bank DID use proper CBA, it would play a macroeconomic stabilization role as more projects would be financeable when discount rates are low and project inputs are underemployed). Moreover, it would not only improve decision making in subnational projects -- because of CBA and development of sectoral expertise, for example, promoting land use and building code reform leadership-- but also make subnational spending more countercyclical.
18. Failure to reform taxes by:
a. Substituting a VAT for wage taxes to fully fund Social Security and Medicare/ACA/Medicaid [https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/socia-insurance-20]
b. Eliminating taxes on business income/impute business income to owners’ personal income
c. Converting deductions for favored consumption items like mortgage interest, SALT, charitable deductions, health insurance/expenditures into partial tax credits (at a rate < maximum marginal rate).
d. Raising amounts of income deductible for retirement and education expenditure accounts, moving the progressive _income tax_ toward a progressive _consumption tax_.
e. Eliminating preferential rates for dividend and capital gains (indexing gains, but eliminating “step up” adjustment on inheritance)
f. Increasing the EITC, restructuring it to be more of a wage subsidy
19. Last but most important of all, failure to raise enough revenue with tax reforms (and taking into account new spending) to virtually eliminate the deficit. [https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/debtpocalypse]
If this looks like a Neo-social Democracy agenda for a Harris administration, so be it.
Image Prompt: Well-dressed elderly man standing before a judge at a judicial bench. The judge is holding a gavel shaped as a dollar sign.
[Standard bleg: Although my style is know-it-all-ism, I do sometime entertain the thought that, here and there, I might be mistaken on some minor detail. I would welcome comments on these views.]
There is nothing radically centrist about many of these policy proposals. They are in fact radical proposals combining the worst parts of libertarianism and liberalism/progressivism.
VAT =Ever increasing taxes hidden from the public. No thank you.
You want to federalize everything, from the police to unemployment insurance. Goodbye federalism and states rights (and diversity) by centralizing everything in the hands of unelected bureaucrats who are unelected and VERY far from the people whom their policies affect. No thank you.
Moratorium on immigration. Maybe, just maybe, we can talk about facilitating high-skilled, wealthy immigrants when and ONLY when we get our own house under control. Even then, Americans have learned that immigration will be gamed as "high-skilled' is endlessly watered down year after year. Look at HB-1 visas. Temporary nonimmigrant guest worker visas, which increased in number, then allowed for permanent residency, then could stay in US AFTER being laid off so you can find another job. You have foreigns working HR jobs on HB-1 visas being labeled "high-skilled. Complete and utter bullshit. No high-skilled immigration, which is a euphemism for unchecked mass migration of the world's middle class. No thank you.
Biden withdrew Trump's Remain in Mexico program, which was fantastic. Everyone knows that once someone sets foot in the US, they are almost impossible to deport. No one will even come looking for them. Asylum is being gamed and the issue is not "resources." Americans don't want to spend endless billions on adjudicating claims that will never be approved. We don't want your solution. No thank you.
No loan forgiveness for borrowers paid for by the US taxpayer. No heads I win, tails you lose anymore. Going to school and borrowing money for it entails risk. The risk is on YOU. Student loans guaranteed and the complete lack of underwriting standards led to this. No loan forgiveness whatsoever (unless you are completely disabled). No thank you.
No higher taxes. I want to keep my own money. If the government (federal, state and local) shower any fiscal restraint whatsoever, even if just during the good times, I could countenance this but they NEVER EVER show any desire to rein in spending. If we lowered taxes during flush years and then increased during the hard years, I could support higher taxes. That never ever comes to pass though. No thank you.
It's fascinating to me how "centrists" can make policy proposals that are actually quite radical and left-wing but present them as reasonable.
2,4 6, 13, 19. The lard, endless pork from both parties irritates me to no end when you have to stretch every dollar.
I'm a half full kind of gal and given independents like me we're hoping for a 4 year placeholder, unification, back to regular order. I still think he/cabinet delivered quite well for the American people. Crime us down, inflation down, restoring is happening, given the right condition the US will become an energy, innovation powerhouse.
I still want to move forward in coalitions and compromises. There are tiny blossoms showing. Even on days when I'm tired.
Unity.