If Republicans only listened…
“I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition. It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear… I speak as a Republican, I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States Senator. I speak as an American…
“Today our country is being psychologically divided by the confusion and suspicions that
...spread like cancerous tentacles of ‘know nothing, suspect everything’ attitudes. I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calamity – Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry and Smear…Surely we Republicans aren’t that desperate for victory…While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican Party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people.”
“I think that it is high time for the United States Senate and its members to do some soul searching — for us to weigh our consciences — on the manner in which we are performing our duty to the people of America… I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution.”
Amazing. How did Senator Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) know, when she made her Declaration of Conscience speech before the U.S. Senate in 1950, that her Republican party would come to exemplify “know nothing, suspect everything”?
During his last campaign, Trump said, “This election is a choice between a crippling depression or a historic boom. It is, you’ll have a depression. All that money. All those 401Ks, they’re going to go right down the tubes, throw it out.” Later, he tweeted, “Your 401ks will crash with Biden. Massive Biden Tax and Regulation increases will destroy all that you have built!”
Not quite. In fact, the day before Joe Biden was inaugurated, the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) rose 116 points to 30,930. Last week, the DJIA closed above 35,000, a record high, 13 percent higher than when Trump left office.
Also last week, the Commerce Department reported the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), the broadest measure of economic output, grew 1.6 percent in the second quarter of this year; on an annualized basis, the growth rate is 6.5 percent. The U.S. economy is returning to its pre-pandemic size. The growth was fueled by both strong consumer spending and business investment. That is amazing, coming exactly one year after the economy’s worst quarterly contraction on record. After the Great Recession ended in 2009, the GDP took two years to fully rebound.
The GDP report showed a 12 percent increase in consumer spending on services, up from 3.9 percent in the first quarter. That’s important because more spending on things including travel also helps bring back jobs in industries that were hit hard by the pandemic. Restaurant dining, for example, has recovered; in June, employment rose in the leisure and hospitality sectors, along with hotels, arts and entertainment.
Growth might have been even higher had it not been for supply-chain disruptions and labor shortages that made it difficult for many businesses to stock their shelves and staff their stores and restaurants.
Trump also said, “180 Million People will lose their private healthcare plans.” Needless to say, people have not lost the private healthcare plans. In fact, the Biden administration proposes lowering the eligibility age for Medicare to 60. Under this policy, an additional 20.8 million people, including working-age Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, would have access to Medicare coverage. Health insurance companies would also benefit by offering Medicare Advantage plans to a younger, healthier population.
In Trump’s 2015 book, Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again, he wrote, “Domestically, we need to undertake a massive rebuilding of our infrastructure…You go to countries like China and many others and you look at their train systems and their public transport. It’s so much better. We’re like a third-world country.” In 2016, candidate Trump had this to say about our country’s infrastructure: ““We’ve spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people. If we could’ve spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges and all of the other problems – our airports and all of the other problems we’ve had – we would’ve been a lot better off. I can tell you that right now.” In his 2016 election night victory speech, he said, “We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals, and we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.”
But of course, Trump’s administration did virtually nothing about infrastructure, and his talk about having an infrastructure week, during which he was supposed to announce his plan, became a running joke. Thanks to President Biden, a bipartisan infrastructure plan is finally winding its way through Congress, the first of two pieces of economic legislation Democrats hope to pass this year.
Mark Berg is a community activist in Adams County and a proud Liberal. His email address is MABerg175@Comcast.net.