Saudi Press

Saudi Arabia and the world
Friday, Aug 22, 2025

Obama's economic failures drive Biden's push to 'go big' with stimulus

Obama's economic failures drive Biden's push to 'go big' with stimulus

President Biden says we must "go big" on economic stimulus. Breaking his promise to work across the aisle, Biden is set to jam through a giant $1.9 trillion "relief" bill with only Democratic votes. Biden and his party may drive our nation's budget deficit to $4 trillion this year, all by themselves.

Biden insists on the unprecedented spending spree, even though fully $1 trillion remains unspent from the first two COVID stimulus bills passed last year. Wait 'til voters find out.

Why go down that risky path? Because liberal economists like Paul Krugman have convinced him that the sluggish economy that dogged the Obama-Biden years was caused by inadequate government stimulus spending. The $800 billion American Recover and Reinvestment Act passed in 2009, they argue, was too dinky. That's their excuse for the slowest post-recession recovery in the country's post-war history.

Obama's economic failures drive Biden's push to 'go big' with stimulus


Biden recently explained: "When this nation hit the Great Recession that Barack and I inherited in 2009...There was a big recovery package, roughly $800 billion.... it wasn't enough. It wasn't quite big enough. It stemmed the crisis, but the recovery could have been faster and even bigger."

Biden's got it wrong. It wasn't the size of the stimulus that held us back. It was Obama's damaging blizzard of regulations that created uncertainty, put hiring on hold and dampened the recovery that should have been delivered by the biggest spending boondoggle in our history.

In early 2015, six years into his presidency, only 38 percent of the nation thought Obama's policies had made the economy better - the highest rating he earned during that time.

As for the stimulus, as one account noted at the time, "Adjusted for inflation, [the stimulus] was nearly five times more expensive than the Works Progress Administration. It was bigger than the Louisiana Purchase, the Manhattan Project, the moon race and the Marshall Plan."

Green shoots began to pop up after the financial crisis, and the stimulus bill initially boosted optimism. Biden, charged with overseeing the budget-buster, promised early on that the $800 billion spending marathon would "literally drop kick us out of the recession." That's how big it was.

But Obama's first move as president was not to encourage hiring and growth but to embroil the nation in a bitter brawl over health care. The dogfight over ObamaCare consumed our politics for the first year of Obama's presidency, with the Affordable Care Act ultimately becoming law in March 2010.

During that period, employers wrestled with emerging mandates over the costs of providing health care coverage; the makers of medical devices faced new taxes and fees and other industries, like hospitals and pharmaceuticals, faced changes too.

So complex and poorly written was ObamaCare that what started out as a 906-page bill grew to more than 20,000 pages of regulations three years later.

The impact from the ACA and other regulations passed by the Obama-Biden White House was to deflate, especially, small business optimism. Surveys conducted by the National Federation of Independent Businesses show that the expectations of mom-and-pop firms, responsible for roughly half the country's employment, were mired at near-recession levels until President Trump was elected in 2016, when optimism soared.

It wasn't just the Affordable Care Act that set managers on their heels. In 2010, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which responded to the financial crisis by instigating a slew of new rules for financial institutions.

In addition, Obama empowered agencies such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to pursue charges of "systemic racism." In 2012, lawsuits brought by the EEOC against private companies "secured more than $365.4 million in monetary benefits," the "highest level of monetary relief ever obtained by the Commission..."

As one protesting lawyer declared, "[The EEOC] pursued this small business, with no previous dealings with the EEOC, like it was a Fortune 500 Company...Heaven help the small business that becomes the target of the EEOC."

The same lament was heard from those hounded by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

In 2012, with the economy again hovering on the brink of recession, surveys from the NFIB and the National Association of Manufacturing showed that 69 percent of small business owners agreed that, "President Obama's Executive Branch and regulatory policies have hurt American small businesses and manufacturers." Worse, over half said they would not start a business today "given what they know now and in the current environment."

Having seemingly not learned a thing from those years, President Biden has begun his administration by ordering a slew of job-killing mandates, like the cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline and restrictions on oil and gas drilling, which will dampen whatever boost we might expect from his $1.9 trillion package.

Biden has promised to raise taxes, which will further slow hiring, as will Democrats' efforts to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour. The Congressional Budget Office just released a report showing that hike alone would eliminate 1.4 million jobs.

Our economy today is in much better shape than it was in 2008, and much further along the path to recovery. In addition, most of the joblessness and income shortfalls of today are the consequence of government-mandated shutdowns, not any underlying weakness in demand.

Businesses and schools should quickly reopen as the COVID vaccines roll out; out-of-work employees in the restaurant industry or airlines, for instance, will go back to work once we achieve herd immunity and those businesses resume operating. That's the stimulus the country actually needs.

Biden's pitch for a $1.9 trillion bill is not about restoring jobs and growth. It is about Democrats' determination to keep control of Congress in 2022. Democrats seem to forget that Obama-Biden received a "shellacking" in the 2010 midterms, mainly because unemployment was 9.8 percent and inching higher. The $800 billion stimulus didn't save them then; Biden's $1.9 trillion won't save them in 2022.

Newsletter

Related Articles

Saudi Press
0:00
0:00
Close
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Miles Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Cristiano Ronaldo Makes Surprise Stop at New Hong Kong Museum
Zelenskyy to Visit Washington after Trump–Putin Summit Yields No Agreement
High-Stakes Trump-Putin Summit on Ukraine Underway in Alaska
Iranian Protection Offers Chinese Vehicle Shipments a Cost Advantage over Japanese and Korean Makers
Saudi Arabia accelerates renewables to curb domestic oil use
Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodríguez announce engagement
Asia-Pacific dominates world’s busiest flight routes, with South Korea’s Jeju–Seoul corridor leading global rankings
Private Welsh island with 19th-century fort listed for sale at over £3 million
Sam Altman challenges Elon Musk with plans for Neuralink rival
Australia to Recognize the State of Palestine at UN Assembly
The Collapse of the Programmer Dream: AI Experts Now the Real High-Earners
Armenia and Azerbaijan to Sign US-Brokered Framework Agreement for Nakhchivan Corridor
British Labour Government Utilizes Counter-Terrorism Tools for Social Media Monitoring Against Legitimate Critics
WhatsApp Deletes 6.8 Million Scam Accounts Amid Rising Global Fraud
Nine people have been hospitalized and dozens of salmonella cases have been reported after an outbreak of infections linked to certain brands of pistachios and pistachio-containing products, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada
Texas Residents Face Water Restrictions While AI Data Centers Consume Millions of Gallons
Tariffs, AI, and the Shifting U.S. Macro Landscape: Navigating a New Economic Regime
India Rejects U.S. Tariff Threat, Defends Russian Oil Purchases
United States Establishes Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile
Thousands of Private ChatGPT Conversations Accidentally Indexed by Google
China Tightens Mineral Controls, Curtailing Critical Inputs for Western Defence Contractors
OpenAI’s Bold Bet: Teaching AI to Think, Not Just Chat
BP’s Largest Oil and Gas Find in 25 Years Uncovered Offshore Brazil
JPMorgan and Coinbase Unveil Partnership to Let Chase Cardholders Buy Crypto Directly
British Tourist Dies Following Hair Transplant in Turkey, Police Investigate
WhatsApp Users Targeted in New Scam Involving Account Takeovers
Trump Deploys Nuclear Submarines After Threats from Former Russian President Medvedev
Germany’s Economic Breakdown and the Return of Militarization: From Industrial Collapse to a New Offensive Strategy
IMF Upgrades Global Growth Forecast as Weaker Dollar Supports Outlook
Politics is a good business: Barack Obama’s Reported Net Worth Growth, 1990–2025
"Crazy Thing": OpenAI's Sam Altman Warns Of AI Voice Fraud Crisis In Banking
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
President Trump Diagnosed with Chronic Venous Insufficiency After Leg Swelling
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Nvidia Becomes World’s First Four‑Trillion‑Dollar Company Amid AI Boom
Iranian President Reportedly Injured During Israeli Strike on Secret Facility
Kurdistan Workers Party Takes Symbolic Step Towards Peace in Northern Iraq
BRICS Expands Membership with Indonesia and Ten New Partner Countries
Elon Musk Founds a Party Following a Poll on X: "You Wanted It – You Got It!"
AI Raises Alarms Over Long-Term Job Security
Saudi Arabia Maintains Ties with Iran Despite Israel Conflict
Russia Formally Recognizes Taliban Government in Afghanistan
×