GOP critics refuse to give Biden the credit he deserves

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The classic embodiment of chutzpah known to every lawyer on Earth is the teenager who murders his parents and then seeks clemency on the grounds that he is an orphan. Joe Biden’s GOP critics are starting to sound a lot like this teenager, issuing criticisms that are starting to sound just as laughable.

Characters who have denied the existence of COVID, encouraged behaviors that spread it, dismissed public health advice, derided vaccinations, and attempted to block vaccination programs have contributed to the devastating effects of the virus, making it harder for them to mitigation. When asked in late January 2020 if there was cause for concern over COVID, then-President Donald Trump replied “No. Not at all. We have it totally under control. He’s a person from China and we’re controlling him. Everything will be fine.”

The Biden administration has managed to fully vaccinate 210 million Americans, and about 83 million of them have been strengthened. Biden’s critics, many of whom have done their best to prevent this progress, rejoice that Biden failed to “succeed” in stopping a virus from mutating, as if he could or they were. able to speak.

For four years, Trump actively encouraged Vladimir Putin to conclude that he could succeed with the United States, doing his best to weaken NATO. Trump humiliated Ukraine and withheld desperately needed military aid to defend itself against Russian aggression, all so he could extort a bogus announcement of a bogus ‘investigation’ into Biden and Israel. use to win an election he knew he would otherwise lose.

Now Trump stalwarts are accusing Biden of being soft on Russia and soft on Ukraine.

When Biden took office, Trump’s “there’s no virus here” genius had caused the US economy to plummet, leaving us in DEFCON 1. In Biden’s first year, 6.4 million jobs have been added, more than in any president’s first year.

Unemployment, which was 6.3% when Trump fled to Florida, was 3.9% a year later. The average hourly wage was 4.7% higher at the end of 2021 than it was when Trump left office. And even adjusted for inflation, Americans’ disposable incomes were higher than they were in 2019 and 2020.

But Biden’s critics say his economic policy has “failed.”

The narrative peddled by some and swallowed whole by others that Biden’s freshman year was a failure defies the facts — but then the defiance of the facts becomes a thing.

Perhaps most amusing is the Republicans’ line that Biden “failed to unify” America. It’s nothing but wealth coming from those who, all in phase, refused to join Biden’s efforts to make legislation to cure a sick bipartisan country. Having resolved to block the Biden administration at every turn, they accuse him of failing to bring the nation together. Only the truly gullible would buy this flim-flam, but we have plenty of them.

Even so, Biden managed within 60 days of becoming president to enact the US Bailout Package, a $1.9 trillion relief package that helped keep state and local governments functioning, paid for a massive vaccination program that saved countless American lives, kept millions of renters living under one roof, and put food on the table for millions whose breadwinners were out of work and either on the ropes or not far from there.

He passed into law a $1.2 trillion infrastructure and jobs package that, as the Brookings Institute put it, “touches all sectors of infrastructure, transportation and water to energy, broadband and resilience and the rehabilitation of our country’s natural resources”. It is, says Brookings, “a patient, long-term approach to rebuilding American competitiveness.”

Not bad for 12 months of work. This should make Americans stop, think, cast off the nerve, and give credit where credit is due.

Jeff Robbins is a Boston lawyer and former US delegate to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.

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