As the U.S. president’s era draws to a close, Stefan Moore takes stock of his signature domestic and foreign policies.
U.S. President Joe Biden heading to Oval Office in May 2022. (White House, Adam Schultz)
By Stefan Moore
Special to Consortium News
“Joe Biden’s legacy of accomplishments over the past three years is unmatched in modern history” proclaimed Kamala Harris one day after her cognitively deteriorating boss dropped out of the presidential race.
The hosannas were echoed by a chorus of pundits and celebrities including MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow who gushed, “What a man. What a patriot. He has been a phenomenal president,” said Late Show comic Stephen Colbert, who called Biden “… a great president [who] reasserted America’s place on the world stage,” and filmmaker Ken Burns who declared that, “Biden will go down as one of the great ones … up there with LBJ and FDR.”
Indeed, the Biden administration’s policy initiatives have been full of impressive sounding promises to deliver jobs, reduce poverty and tackle climate change.
But outside the media bubble, as inequality continues to surge, Harris’s and the others’ rosy views of Biden’s accomplishments are not likely shared by the millions of Americans living pay check to pay check, for whom real wages are down 2.4 percent, prices up by 15 percent; by the 150 million people who don’t have more than $500 savings for emergencies; the 100 million underinsured American who can’t afford to pay their medical bills, or by the thousands dying in U.S.-financed wars from the Ukraine to Gaza.
As the Biden era draws to a close it’s time to take stock of what Biden’s signature domestic and foreign policies and promises have actually achieved. It matters because waiting in the wings is his VP and anointed successor who, as second in command, has been identified with his policies over the past four years.
Here’s the record.
Child Poverty
As part of the American Rescue Plan in the midst of the Covid pandemic Biden introduced an increase in the child tax credits that promised to reduce child poverty across America. There was an initial decrease but the program was later abandoned and child poverty soared to 12.4 percent, more than doubling from 5.2 percent in 2021.
In addition, federal benefits meant to help families afford food, housing and other basic needs all expired as the government became more concerned with rising inflation and budget deficits. As a result, low-income Americans are now worse off than at the height of the Covid pandemic.
Health Care
While the Biden administration has increased the number of Americans enrolled in the Affordable Care Act, there are still more than 100 million people, 1-in-every-3 Americans, critically underinsured and in dire medical debt. Biden is strenuously opposed to a single-payer, government-run health system, like many U.S. allies have.
In a 2020 primary debate he turned to Senator Bernie Sanders and, puffing out his chest, offered this unexplained reason why the U.S. can’t have the health insurance system of Denmark: “Because we are the United States of America!” What could he possibly have meant other than he would protect an American capitalist system that put profit before health care for all citizens.
Jobs
Biden claimed to have created 13 million new jobs, however, 72 percent of the gains were jobs recovered from losses during the pandemic. When compared to pre-pandemic levels, employment is up by only 3.7 million, not an impressive figure. And job growth claims are misleading in another way —part-time jobs are outpacing full time employment. In June alone, part-time jobs increased by 50,000 while full-time workers fell by 38,000.
Wages
Biden, right, campaigning for president at a Teamsters event in Clinton, Iowa, June 12, 2019. (Adam Schultz / Biden for President, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Accounting for inflation, real wages are down 2.24 percent since Biden took office and prices have soared 15 percent. As a result, real disposable income has decreased by a whopping 9.04 percent between 2021 and 2024 as wages failed to keep pace with inflation.
Minimum Wage
During his campaign Biden promised to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour but once in office he threw up his hands saying he was powerless to get it passed. The U.S. minimum wage of $7.25 per hour ranks near the bottom of all OECD countries and has not been raised since 2009.
Infrastructure
Biden is credited with huge investments in the country’s infrastructure and climate change initiatives through the $1 trillion Infrastructure and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. “Last year,” Biden bragged, “we funded 700,000 major construction projects – 700,000 all across America. From highways to airports to tunnels to broadband.” Sounds impressive, but the figure is “wildly inaccurate” according to a CNN fact check. The actual figure is 7,000 projects.
Also, Biden’s claim to spend $1 trillion over the next decade is misleading. Again, sounds great until you consider that the gross national product will be $300 trillion over the next decade. As Paul Krugman points out, this will amount to about one third of 1 percent of GDP. “Hardly massive,” says Krugman.
Inequality
Income inequality under Biden is more obscene than ever — the most recent data shows that the top 1 percent own 31.4 percent of American wealth, more than the entire bottom 90 percent. “Mr. Biden ignores the inequality at the heart of Bidenomics at his political peril,” warned Karen Petrou, author of Engine of Inequality: The Fed and the Future of Wealth in America, in a New York Times op-ed last year. “America’s top 1 percent always got far more than 1 percent of national income and wealth, but they have rarely gotten as much as they do now.”
Climate Change
People’s Plenary, COP27, Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Nov. 17, 2022. (UNclimatechange, Flickr)
Hailed as America’s first “climate president,” Biden promised “the largest investment in combatting the climate crisis in U.S. history” paving the way for hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs. Despite this, the Trump-era drilling boom continues unabated.
In addition to opening up vast tracts for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere, last year Biden approved one of the largest oil exploration projects in decades in the Alaskan wilderness, “effectively adding the emissions of the entire country of Belgium, via just one project,” writes environmental journalist Oliver Milman.
Under Biden, U.S. oil and gas production are now at record highs and seriously threaten U.S. ability to reach its goal of zero net emissions by 2050.
Foreign Policy
Biden on the phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on Jan. 27, 2023. Sitting in on the call, from left, are National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley. (White House, Carlos Fyfe)
Of all Biden’s promises, there is nothing more consequential than his abandoned pledge to make the world safer and keep the U.S. out of war. In September 2021, after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, Biden promised the United Nations that “relentless war” would be supplanted by “relentless diplomacy,” proclaiming that the U.S. “had turned the page.”
Instead, Biden has signed the largest military budget in history ($886 billion), spent over a hundred billion dollars to finance the devastating and avoidable proxy war in Ukraine, ramped up military confrontation with China, and supplied the diplomatic cover and bombs for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza where, daily, the shattered bodies of tiny children are strewn across blood-smeared hospital floors as helpless doctors rush to save what lives they can.
With the urgent need to end Israel’s criminal assault on the Palestinian people where over 40,000 people have died (volunteer physicians put the toll at over 90,000), Biden’s record doesn’t hold out much hope.
Throughout his career, Biden has been a self-described Zionist (an Irish-American Zionist as Benjamin Netanyahu said in his recent speech to Congress) and declared his “unwavering” support for Israel. His loyalty has been repaid in spades with more money from the Israel lobby (AIPAC) going into his election coffers than any other U.S. politician in history. It comes as no surprise that the Biden administration has unconditionally supported Israeli war crimes in Palestine and has blocked United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Harris’s record, both as a senator and as Biden’s VP is not much more promising. During her 2020 presidential bid, Harris was backed by an array of Jewish groups including Democratic Majority for Israel, J Street, the Jewish Democratic Council of America and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) where she has spoken at their conferences about the “unbreakable” bonds between the U.S. and Israel.
Do black people truly believe this person is going to fight for OUR community?
— Revolutionary Blackout Network? (@SocialistMMA) August 1, 2024
More recently however, after meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister and ICC-charged war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu after his address to the U.S. Congress Harris told reporters:
“What happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering and I will not be silenced.”
What was Doug Emhoff—Kamala Harris’ spouse— doing upstaging her two days before her meeting with Netanyahu in the White House? He is an avid AIPAC fan and spoke for her before she was going to speak for herself after her meeting. That’s not the first time he’s done that. It’s…
— Ralph Nader (@RalphNader) August 1, 2024
Of course, at a time when the war in Gaza is becoming a political liability for the Biden administration, Harris is hedging her bets. Given the shallowness and deceitfulness of performative politics, however, it will be difficult to decipher whether she will hold Israel accountable for its crimes or continue Biden’s lethal alliance.
If history is a guide, we can’t rely on our politicians for serious foreign or domestic policy change. We have to make our voices heard.
Stefan Moore is an American-Australian documentary filmmaker whose films have received four Emmys and numerous other awards. In New York he was a series producer for WNET and a producer for the prime-time CBS News magazine program 48 HOURS. In the U.K. he worked as a series producer at the BBC, and in Australia he was an executive producer for the national film company Film Australia and ABC-TV.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
I’m with Patrick Lawrence on Genocide Joe: he’s the worst President we’ve ever had, and the damage he’s done won’t be easy to fix, if it can ever be fixed. We are, the whole world, on the beink of World War because of that imbecile Biden. And, Harris? Another disaster in the wings.
I couldn’t agree more.
Ralph Nader does not know that Harris’s husband was her AIPAC handler when she was in Congress?
As a former teacher, I give this weak, milquetoasty article a C-minus. While I admit that an article which purports to reveal “The Real Joe Biden” would have to be very long in its litany of egregious – indeed criminal – misdeeds, there are actions or non-actions which I feel should have been included. How about blowing up the NordStream pipeline providing essential gas to one of your key allies? (ok, “vassal state” instead of ally). Certainly continuing to prosecute the Trump-begun case against Julian Assange, one of the most important First Amendment/Free Press cases in our history, deserved inclusion. And on the First Amendment, how about Biden’s condemnation of the peaceful pro-Palestinian protest this past spring. And while so much attention has been directed to the Bush and Trump conservative appointees on the Supreme Court, let’s remember that we largely have Senator Biden, as Chair of the Judiciary Committee, to thank for the unqualified and corrupt Clarence Thomas. One more: no more important member of Congress responsible for the disastrous Iraq invasion, than the then Chair of Foreign Relations Committee, yup, you got it – Joe Biden.
Give me more Caitlin Johnstone/Norman Solomon articles, less by this author.
I agree. I couldn’t be bothered to get lost in the superficial details when we have no democratic choice to begin with. Political bribery is legal, gifts for political favors is legal . How anyone can still speak of a functioning “democracy” is beyond me: it looks like classic denial. Very few want to broach the subject of deep-seated institutional corruption in all three branches of govt. as well as the (normalized, de-regulated) corruption in our financial institution. We already forgot that the TBTF banks are above the law, US and Israeli war criminals are above the law. The law and taxes is only to beat down the “little people”
In short: it won’t make a damn bit of difference: both parties are clearly anti-labor, pro-oligarchy, anti-environment, pro-genocide, kleptocratic warmongers . No matter who “wins” Elections Inc., the health care crisis, household debt crisis, housing crisis, environmental crisis, disparity of wealth crisis, genocide, likelihood of nuclear war etc. will only get worse. There is no way to vote against the interests of oligarchy and the Washington Consensus. It is too emotionally disturbing to admit for most. Millions will go to the polls and vote for genocide.
Spot on assessment there
Thank you, Larry, for a very good analysis of this article. And for remembering Biden’s unwavering support for Clarence Thomas. I actually had someone tell me Biden supported Anita Hill! That kind of support I would hope never to be subjected to! and I wouldn’t be because I was never taught to “act like a lady.”
Of course one could write a book on Biden’s presidency as no doubt will be written, but any article-length treatment necessarily must be limited.This was intended to counter all the false praise he has been getting.
I agree with your assessment of this article. Biden should have been criticized far more harshly than mentioned above.
hxxps://harpers.org/archive/2019/03/joe-biden-record/
The best concise summary I’ve seen as we head into Kamalot. Teams red and blue certainly know how to screw the poor election after election.
You actually went a bit easy on old Joe. He is perhaps one of the worst presidents of my lifetime, and I voted for Jimmy Carter. Biden was the quintessential war monger his entire career, pushing the Democrats to embrace every war that loomed on the horizon. He helped put put millions of people in jail for minor drug crimes, and he was the key person who drove the war in Ukraine starting with the Maidan coup. The world has never been closer to nuclear war, all thanks to Joe Biden and his wretched team of sociopaths.
I think he is the worst president in my lifetime because the government is far more unresponsive to Americans’ needs than ever before. I never bother signing petitions anymore because it is clear it does not matter. All that matters to those gangsters in Congress is getting their bribes from the ethno-state.
Although a good case can be made for Biden’s presidency being one of the worst, certainly in the Foreign Policy area it is the most incompetent in recent memory. (And I’m old!!). The Oval Office photo shows this. Here’s my caption: “Sullivan, Austin, Milley, Blinken (and Nod?) after being chastised on the phone by Netanyahu for suggesting that Palestinian children really do need to eat, and just before sent to their offices without dinner, and Catholic President Biden saying his Act of Contrition before being sent to a corner of his office (ok, maybe the Oval Office dosn’t have a corner) by Netanyahu for withholding a small amount of the the large shipment of 2,000 lb bombs.
Spot on
Well, I guess that raises the obvious question of what Biden’s most important accomplishment has been in his past four years. The national Democratic establishment and their special interest masters would doubtless say it was keeping Bernie Sanders out of the oval office, because they pulled out all the stops to keep that disaster from occurring by taking advantage of a full team of primary challengers and of the Covid epidemic to effectively end the 2020 primaries. And of course they called that ensuring safety for the country by preventing Trump from retaining his Russian-engineered grasp on the country’s reins which their co-conspirators in the Deep State had so effectively crafted out of whole cloth, because there was no way they would have supported Bernie’s campaign against Trump because that would have been downright un-American as Bernie was almost a Russian himself.
So that one effort on Joe’s part made up for all the other missed swings at all those other balls. Thank you, Joe, for everything that you saved us from, and thanks for having been such a valuable example to Kamala for her coming role in replacimg you.
Excellent! A very helpful report for building perspective. Nor should we forget back when he was VP Joe’s puffing out his chest and declaring “son of a bitch!” in self-congratulation, having just succeeded with the firing of Victor Shokin, the prosecutor investigating Burisma Holdings. The gas company had hired son Hunter at upwards of 50,000 a month for a position on its executive board, and the owner of that company requested that Victor Shokin (with strong reputation as a prosecutor) get off his back. Joe accommodated. He threatened Ukraine’s then president that a 1 billion loan would be canceled within a few hours unless the prosecutor was fired. This diplomacy worked effectively. And on to his “son of a bitch!” remark.
Yes. Biden subverted Ukraine’s government when he ordered the Ukrainian president to fire Victor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor.
That’s a fact, not a speculation. I viewed a video of Biden boasting about it to a meeting of a pro-war non-profit group.
The mainstream media conspired to suppress the Biden-Ukraine corruption story, which is even more outrageous than Biden’s behavior.