The Republican leader of the U.S. House of Representatives sought to make some political hay by asking if we are “better off today than we were two years ago.”
Well, Kevin McCarthy of California, your effort to denigrate Joe Biden’s presidency deserves a look. So … here goes:
- On Biden’s watch, Congress approved a bipartisan bill — the first in 30-something years — that seeks to stem gun violence.
- When Russia invaded Ukraine this past February, President Biden was able to present a unified NATO and European Union front in response to the illegal and criminal act of war.
- The president was able to shepherd through Congress a massive infrastructure improvement bill that seeks to repair our nation’s roads, bridges and airports.
- Joe Biden nominated and then welcomed the nation’s first Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
- We have turned the corner on the international pandemic.
- Fuel prices, which skyrocketed and led the inflationary surge of recent months, have retreated dramatically.
- The United States has created more private-sector jobs in the first two years of President Biden’s term than at any similar time in its history.
- Unemployment currently stands at 3.5%.
- Congressional Democrats — fighting unanimous Republican opposition — managed to pass the nation’s first-ever meaningful law dealing with climate change; it also seeks to curb health costs and reduce inflation.
- We have cut by roughly half the nation’s annual budget deficit.
So, taken together, I think I have an answer to Leader McCarthy’s question.
Yes. We are better off than we were when President Joseph R. Biden Jr. took office.