Don’t Let Biden Kill Trump’s Post-COVID Economic Boom

I&I Editorial

After growing at a blistering 33.1% pace in the third quarter, the economy is poised for another double-digit leap in Q4. Now there’s talk of a roaring ‘20s-style revival on the way as two new vaccines start making the rounds and the nation gets back to normal.

None of this was supposed to happen – at least not in this time frame. And none of it will continue if Democrats gain control of the Senate. Let’s rewind the clocks a few months to understand why.

Once the economy came to a screeching halt amid what turn out to be reckless and largely pointless lockdowns, mainstream economists started predicting another slow recovery, while bashing President Donald Trump for saying otherwise.

”White House predictions about how the U.S. economy might rebound from the coronavirus crisis and how quickly a vaccine might be rolled out came under question,” is how one news outlet put it in May.

Politico declared in June that “Trump has been quick to declare victory against the coronavirus recession, comparing U.S. economic growth to a ‘rocket ship’ and predicting ‘GREATNESS, and soon!’ Economists are telling a different story.”

Slow growth and a long stretch of high unemployment was what the nation faced, according to the experts.  

Then the economy blew the experts away with that 33.1% rebound, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. And now, with less than two weeks to go in the year, the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank’s GDPNow forecasts 11.1% growth in Q4, which if it holds up would be more than twice the rate predicted by the consensus of so-called Blue Chip economists.

Meanwhile, the jobless rate, or so we were told, would still be close to 10% by year’s end.

In fact, the unemployment rate fell from a peak in 14.7% in April to 6.7% in November. That means it is already lower than it was in five of Vice President Joe Biden’s eight years in office. More than half of the jobs lost from the COVID-19 lockdowns had been regained by November,

There was also, we were told, no way that pharmaceutical companies would be able to develop, test and win approval of one vaccine, let alone two before this year was out.

In fact, Trump was relentlessly mocked when in May he started making his prediction of a vaccine by year’s end. Either he was stupid, or uninformed, or he was just playing politics.

The press dismissed Trump’s promise as “hyper-ambitious,” and said it would “shatter conventional wisdom.”

An NBC News “fact check” in May declared that ”experts say that the development, testing and production of a vaccine for the public is still at least 12 to 18 months off, and that anything less would be a medical miracle.”

Once again, Trump was right and legions of “experts” had egg on their faces.

Left alone, this riot of good news will continue, with the economy picking up where it left off before the coronavirus outbreak, which had already produced record-low unemployment rates for minorities, rising household income for the middle class, and other widespread economic gains. (All of that thanks largely to Trump’s tax cuts, deregulations, and other pro-energy and pro-business policies.)

Unfortunately, Biden has no intention of leaving well enough alone.

Having run on the most leftist agenda in American history, Biden intends to undo all the good things Trump has achieved and impose policies that will turn any hope of a roaring ‘20s repeat into a rerun of the ’30s Great Depression.

Every major policy Biden campaigned on is anti-growth, from repealing Trump’s business tax cuts, to massive new taxes on investment and mandates on businesses. He vows to repeal Trump’s deregulatory agenda, and he wants to vastly expand federal control of the economy in the name of “climate change” and “fairness.” Biden boasts of an FDR-scale agenda without realizing that it was Franklin Roosevelt’s reckless interventions that extended and deepened the Great Depression.

This is to say nothing of the Democrats’ broader ambitions of killing the filibuster, packing the Supreme Court and adding new states to the union to ensure leftist election and policy victories far into the future.

Biden says he needs to win the Georgia Senate runoffs because “we can get so much done.”

He’s right about that. With the Senate now 50-48 in favor of Republicans, Democrats must win both runoff elections to control the Senate (with Kamala Harris acting as the tie-breaking vote.)

The rest of the county should pray that Biden doesn’t get his wish. The only chance for continued growth and prosperity is a Republican-controlled Senate willing and able to keep Biden’s agenda safely locked in his Delaware basement.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board