STEPHEN MOORE: Who Is The Real President For The Middle Class?
President Joe Biden talked incessantly about his “middle class out” economic strategy. Given his record, it would have been more accurate to call it the “middle class down and out” plan. Inflation has eroded away any…
President Joe Biden talked incessantly about his “middle class out” economic strategy. Given his record, it would have been more accurate to call it the “middle class down and out” plan. Inflation has eroded away any income gains under Biden’s presidency.
Now Vice President Kamala Harris has her own riff on this theme. Her campaign motto is “Building up the middle class.” It isn’t exactly “Make America Great Again,” but Democrats don’t have a lot of time to come up with anything catchier, given that Harris was reluctantly chosen as the 8th-inning relief pitcher for Old Joe, who had long ago lost his fastball.
But Harris and Biden are, as the old saying goes, “birds of a feather who stick together.” They are running on almost precisely the same agenda as we’ve seen for four years.
The central problem is that the record for most Americans is a lot more meaningful than the message. The irony of this “build the middle class” mantra is that no administration in recent times has done more to tear down the middle class than Biden-Harris.
The chart below, based on the most recent Census Bureau data on incomes and poverty, shows that under President Donald Trump, incomes of the middle class rose faster than under all three previous presidents combined.
(U.S. Census Bureau Data)
The difference between the two administrations is $8,000 per household in Trump’s favor.
In these numbers, I include the COVID-19 year 2020. Excluding the black swan event of the pandemic that year, Trump’s number for income gains would have been well over $6,000.