Opinion: by Paul Waldman
Two months ago, when the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report for April showed that a mere 266,000 jobs had been created, falling short of expectations, Republicans were positively gleeful, insisting that it showed that President Biden’s entire economic program was an abysmal failure and only a return to Donald Trump’s policies could save America.
On Friday, we got the BLS report for June, and it showed that 850,000 new jobs were created. This will not lead anyone to abandon their prior beliefs, I can assure you. Some Republicans are so desperate to explain it away that they’re saying that current strong job growth is a product of their 2017 tax cut.But there’s no question it’s extremely good news, especially given all the rhetoric we’ve been hearing about how Americans are too lazy to go back to work, and restaurants and hotels can’t find the staff to accommodate the upsurge in customers they have as covid-19 restrictions are lifted.The leisure and hospitality sector — restaurants, bars, hotels — added an extraordinary 343,000 new jobs in June. It’s almost as if all those business owners complaining that they couldn’t find workers at the wages they wanted to pay found a solution to their dilemma — by paying higher wages. Imagine that.
And we should note that the decision by so many Republican governors to cut off enhanced unemployment benefits did not have an impact on this report. By the time the data was collected, only Iowa, Alaska, Missouri and Mississippi had begun ending those benefits.
Whether the economic picture is good or bad, we’re always going to debate whether the administration had anything to do with it. But as we emerge from the pandemic, Biden may have a better case than most presidents to take credit.
The first reason is that unlike that of his predecessor, Biden’s administration has executed a vaccine rollout with competence and efficiency, even if it’s running up against a stubborn refusal to be vaccinated from certain Americans. Without most of the country vaccinated, a recovery would be impossible.
Second, the Democratic economic strategy to handle this pandemic — which dates back to before Biden was president — seems to be working.
When he spoke to reporters Friday about the June jobs numbers, Biden argued that the $1.9 trillion stimulus he signed in March made the difference. “At the time, people questioned whether or not we should do that even though we didn’t have bipartisan support,” he said. “Well, it worked.”
It would be better, though, to think about the government’s effort not as just about that bill, but the entire strategy of aggressive spending — essentially, pouring as much money as possible into the economy, no matter how much it increased the deficit. And this dates back to the beginning of the relief effort in March 2020, with smaller bills and then the $2.2 trillion Cares Act.
Does that mean Trump helped this recovery happen? Not really. Remember that at every stage, as Congress passed multiple relief bills through 2020, Democrats demanded more money be spent while Republicans wanted less, or sometimes nothing at all. Trump himself was typically erratic, calling for new spending one day and issuing veto threats the next; he would ultimately sign whatever bill was put in front of him, though he barely knew what they contained.
Democrats pushed for that increased spending out of both practical and ideological motives: They thought it would work, and they believe government should act aggressively to respond to crises. Republicans tried to minimize the size of the bills for the opposite reasons, though they did see the political danger, especially for Trump’s reelection campaign, if they didn’t do enough.
In other words, while Republicans were reluctantly involved in fashioning stimulus bills passed in 2020, the go-for-broke strategy was entirely devised by Democrats. That then continued with Biden’s stimulus after he took office.
And though things could certainly change, at the moment it seems to have been the right strategy, even if we could argue about how well particular components worked. The catastrophic inflationary spiral some predicted doesn’t look like it’s coming to pass. We’re on pace for a rapid recovery. Wages are rising, and consumer confidence is on a steep upward trend.
And there’s something else at work, something that has become a theme of the Biden presidency. Here’s what he said Friday:
Instead of workers competing with each other for jobs that are scarce, employers are competing with each other to attract workers. That kind of competition in the market doesn’t just give workers more ability to earn higher wages, it also gives them the ability to demand to be treated with dignity and respect in the workplace.
That doesn’t necessarily make everyone happy; a disturbing poll from the progressive firm Data for Progress found 60 percent of Republicans saying higher starting wages for workers are a bad thing because they show that unemployment benefits are too generous.
And to be sure, the American economy has an awfully long way to go before it treats everyone with dignity and respect. But we may at least have made a start.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/02/why-biden-democrats-can-take-credit-an-improving-economy/
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