Jim Hartman: Joe Biden’s very bad year

“It was a very good year,” was classically crooned by Frank Sinatra, even late “in the autumn” of his years. Not so, for our 79-year-old President Joe Biden. He had a politically dismal year in 2021.

Biden’s approval ratings declined from 55 percent in January to 43 percent today. What’s increasingly obvious is Biden is too old to be president and very concerning given his often faltering demeanor.

The positive list of Biden achievements to date arguably consists of two items while the negative list is exhaustive.

In March, Biden won passage of a partisan massive $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill immediately identified as inflationary by Larry Summers, President Obama’s chief economic adviser.

The stimulus bill paid extraordinarily generous unemployment benefits allowing millions to stay out of the workforce thereby playing a role in the supply-chain crisis and inflationary spiral.

The $1.9 trillion was supposed to pay for more COVID-19 testing and treatment but much of the money went to progressive political causes instead.

Biden’s singular bipartisan agreement was a $1 trillion infrastructure bill rescued by support from some Republicans. Only $110 billion in the bill was reserved for traditional infrastructure on such public works as roads and bridges.

But the bill throws money at more than that, including tens of billions in public broadband, Amtrak subsidies and largely on Green New Deal projects.

Biden’s extensive negative list includes:

• Inflation, rising from 1.4 percent on election day to 6.8 percent in November. The U.S. inflation rate has now reached a 39 year high.

• Rising crime, with some 30 major cities across the U.S. recording record or near-record homicides this year. “Smash and grab” became common in 2021, which also saw the rise of criminals who leveraged unenforced misdemeanors into industrialized shoplifting.

• Rising energy costs, with Biden scrapping the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office, killing 11,000 jobs. His assault on natural resource development has been an economic disaster with prices of crude oil, natural gas and home heating oil increasing dramatically.

While former President Trump propelled America to energy independence, Biden purposely squandered it. This summer his administration begged OPEC to increase oil production to combat rising gasoline prices. It refused.

• The disastrous pullout from Afghanistan. The debacle of the U.S. defeat and chaotic retreat was a political calamity for Biden. He demonstrated gross incompetence and politically driven decision-making. Americans and Afghan allies are still stranded in the country and appear to be dishonorably abandoned.

• Biden’s foreign policy fecklessness has emboldened our adversaries – Russia, China and Iran.

The border crisis. Biden laid out a welcome mat for illegal migrants, and the consequences have been devastating. He rejected sensible border policies that aided refugees, helped border guards and dissuaded Central American families from illegally entering the country, apparently because they were Trump policies.

Authorities took more than 1.7 million migrants into custody during 2021, the highest in more than 60 years.

• COVID-19. Biden “didn’t see” either delta or omicron coronavirus variants coming thereby reinforcing the perception the federal response was caught unprepared by the more severe delta variant that swept the country this summer.

Biden’s steps to distribute coronavirus test kits to stem a surge of omicron-related cases were too little and too late, according to health experts.

• Build Back Better. Biden falsely claimed this multitrillion-dollar left-liberal wish-list “costs zero dollars.” Stripped of budget gimmicks, a CBO report shows the true cost of BBB at $4.9 trillion. That finding was enough for moderate Senate Democrat Joe Manchin to announce his opposition to the bill, thereby scuttling BBB for 2021.

Without a political reset, Biden and Democrats appear to be heading into a red tsunami for the 2022 midterm election — absent a disruptive Donald Trump snatching defeat from the jaws of a Republican victory next year.

Jim Hartman resides in Genoa. E-mail lawdocman1@aol.com.