President Joe Biden’s first year in office has led to record low approval ratings. Yet he had done much correctly to this point, but without question much has gone wrong.

The media is very much focused on legislative fights and inside DC baseball. Very little of this is meaningful to a polarized electorate which doesn’t fully understand basic economics but just knows they are hurting.

INFLATION AND SUPPLY CHAIN

Inflation IS THE ISSUE for the American people driving negative feelings towards the administration. Period, end of story. The President has very little in his arsenal to fight inflation, but two things he can do are to reduce tariffs and raise quotas so we can bring in more legal immigrants. I understand during a pandemic both are difficult, and the later particularly tough in a political environment defined by nativism and culture wars, but it has to be done.

Much of the current inflationary spiral was created by Donald Trump’s protectionism, low interest rates and a global economy filled with Trump-like protectionists . This has also impacted the supply chain. A once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic didn’t help matters.

COVID-19

The failure of the US Senate to act on Build Back Better or Voting Rights has been an issue for politicos but not really an issue for the electorate as a whole. COVID not going away has been an issue and the flat-footed responses of the CDC and FDA which is largely beyond Biden’s control have not helped.

This having been said, Biden rightly deserves criticism for his failure to push a ramp-up in testing in the summer, and I still have an issue with his handling of the July 4 holiday, urging vaccinated Americans to act as if it were normal times again, but I recognize I am in a hyper-minority on that matter.

The failure of many Americans to get fully vaccinated, due largely to encouragement from vaccine skeptics like Governor Ron DeSantis and flat-out anti-vaxxers on both sides of the political spectrum have created major problems for this country. To a certain extent, they amount IMO to a degree of deliberate sabotage of our nation’s efforts to get beyond COVID-19, as the long it stays in play, the longer Biden faces political crisis.

BENEFITS TO FLORIDA

I don’t normally print direct party propaganda, but the DNC/FDP did provide some handy talking points applicable to Florida regarding Biden’s first year in office with citations. Since the references check out, here is a handy list of Biden’s positive impacts on Florida.

• Direct Economic Relief: To keep working families on their feet during the pandemic, the American Rescue Plan provided more than 11 million Floridians with a total of $26.5 billion in economic stimulus checks, while also reducing health insurance costs, pausing federal student loans, and halting evictions.
• Child Poverty: The expanded Child Tax Credits in the American Rescue Plan directly benefitted more than 3.6 million children in Florida, with an average monthly payment for each family of $429 – for a total of $5.7 billion in direct relief to working families in the state.
• Jobs: President Biden’s first year in office was the greatest year of job creation in American history, with more than 467,700 jobs created in Florida and more than 6 million jobs nationwide. Experts predict that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will create and sustain 981,500 good, union jobs in Florida over the next ten years.
• Wages: In Florida, workers have seen their wages increase by an average of $0.71 per hour, while unemployment claims are down 86% under President Biden.
• Infrastructure: In Florida alone, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will repair more than 412 miles of road and 90 bridges that desperately need it, which will dramatically reduce the commute times and exorbitant out-of-pocket auto repair costs that Floridians currently face.
• Clean Energy and Climate: The American Rescue Plan and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will provide significant investments to cut air pollution, make homes and businesses more energy efficient, and modernize the electrical grid in Florida. Experts estimate that these investments will create more than 200,000 jobs in the state.
• State and Local Support: The American Rescue Plan provided state and local governments in Florida with $15.9 billion relief, along with $7 billion for Florida schools – funding that goes directly towards keeping schools open and ensuring that our state and local governments have the resources they need to continue to help working families.