Biden’s long road to 2024, comment on budget and other comments
Democrat: Biden’s long road to 2024
President Biden’s “poll placement is nothing to write Scranton home about,” worries The Hill’s Brad Bannon. But: “In the realm of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” and while Biden has “minus 10 percent net personal rating” in the new NBC poll, ex-Prez Donald Trump is “even deeper under water, at minus 19 percent.” But “an incumbent should never stand or fall on his opponent’s weakness, especially when the GOP has gotten its act together and nominated anyone other than Trump,” and “it’s far too early to accept the conventional wisdom that he’s counting on a third.” heading towards nomination. In fact, the “primary poll numbers” are “about as stable as spring weather in New England,” and Trump’s lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is just 15%, which “could disappear entirely in the heat of a tough primary.”
Libertarian: Deal with the budget
“I wish people would stop scaring us for a second so we can have a real conversation about our financial future,” Reason’s Veronique de Rugy enthuses. In the “brewing battle to raise the debt ceiling,” “in story after story, the media warns readers of the terrible things that could happen if” the Republicans got their “paltry cuts”: “The flight delays would be because of the budget cuts increase in air traffic control; hunger would afflict children; Suicides would skyrocket. Woe would befall the Republic. Really? I don’t remember chronic flight delays or a food crisis in 2019.” At the time, “discretionary spending was $1.338 trillion — or about $320 billion fewer than what Republicans are proposing. “Instead of pretending Republicans are monsters demanding small budget cuts, Democrats need to start putting facts before politics” — and “as any serious” person knows, solvency requires “real entitlement program reform.”
From right: Dems’ elitism hurts the middle class
“Excessive government spending, beginning with America’s 2021 bailout plan, fueled the inflation and resulting hardship that households – particularly middle-class households – are struggling with today,” said RealClearPolitics’ Patrice Onwuka. The left credits the Inflation Reduction Act with slowing inflation, but instead it was “a climate law disguised as price easing”. “Spending an average of more than $58,000 on” an electric car is “an afterthought for coastal elites with comfortable six-figure incomes” — but “prohibitive for many US households.” For struggling Americans, President Biden’s EV push is “just another policy to make them eat cake.”
Foreign editorial office: Cuba on the brink
“The Cuban communist regime is at its weakest point in decades,” said Will Freeman of the Council on Foreign Relations. The island’s “already weak economy” is collapsing as it lost support from allies like Venezuela and COVID, which killed tourism that has yet to “fully recover”. Progress on “market reforms have stalled”. And: “Mismanagement and dysfunctions, which were already acute before, have worsened” since Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez took over the office of president in 2018. Inflation hit 200% and is slowly declining. Voters’ refusal to turn up for sham elections is another “sign that Cubans are increasingly willing to resist pressure to participate in legitimizing the regime.” A full 3% of the population attempted to flee across the US southern border. Expect “further instability and dissent”.
Green Clock: Putting people last
The word ‘sustainability’ has promoted ‘a narrative in which human needs and aspirations take second place to the green austerity of Net Zero and degrowth,’ laments Spiked’s Joel Kotkin. “The ruling classes” are “determined to save the planet by impoverishing their fellow citizens.” The expected global cost of their agenda: “$6 trillion a year for the next 30 years.” Green activists want fewer people on the planet, living increasingly impoverished lives. The “ultra rich” will benefit; it is “class warfare masked by green rhetoric” that pits “elites” against “commoners.” It is “no use proposing a” policy “that will keep the poor in poverty. If people’s concerns about the green agenda are not addressed, they will almost certainly seek to disrupt the best plans of our supposedly enlightened elites.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
