Freedom Line Blog

In response to broad public discontent over economic conditions, the Biden/Harris administration habitually points to the nation’s unemployment rate.  What remains underreported is that the unemployment rate is actually on a disturbingly upward trend over the past year, from 3.4% in April 2023 to 4.1% now, just as voters consider whether to continue the economic policies of the past four years:

Unemployment Rate’s Disturbing Upward Rise

In their increasingly desperate effort to resuscitate Joe Biden’s sagging campaign, his defenders claim that stock markets vindicate “Bidenomics” (not that they call it that anymore, of course) vis-a-vis former President Donald Trump.  Well, our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity show what happens when you adjust stock performance to account for out-of-control inflation under Biden:

“Biden Boom?” Not So Much.

In our latest Liberty Update, we call Joe Biden out on his deficit fibbing, which he continued in last week’s debate meltdown against Donald Trump.  Excepting the unanticipated Covid spending that Biden and his party supported, official government data shows in sharp relief how Biden’s baseline deficits exceed Trump’s, as we pointed out:

Biden Baseline Deficits Exceed Trump’s

In recent weeks we at CFIF have criticized the Biden administration’s indefensible legal crusade against entertainment enterprise Live Nation, which promises nothing but a waste of judicial resources and litigation costs in its attempt to reverse a merger that the very same Department of Justice (DOJ) blessed just a few short years ago.

American Enterprise Institute (AEI) scholar and tech expert Mark Jamison adds his own intellectual heft to the issue in his new commentary “The Government Is Gunning for Live Nation.  It’s Making a Historic Mistake”:

The recent case filed by Department of Justice (DOJ) exemplifies the administration’s tendency to view company breakups as a panacea for perceived market ills.  The DOJ argues that Live Nation’s integration of concerts, event venue ownership, talent agencies and ticketing creates barriers to competition and enables the company to engage in unfair practices.  The DOJ believes that spinning off Ticketmaster, which Live Nation acquired nearly 15 years ago, and Live Nation’s concert venues will foster a more competitive market.

History suggests otherwise.”

Mr. Jamison’s piece merits a full read, but he highlights how American consumers will be the ones to pay the price of this latest misguided activism from the Biden administration:

Live Nation has become the world’s leading provider of live concerts, ticket sales and related services.  Its success stems from innovative integration across multiple business lines, a structure that its competitors want to replicate, according to the DOJ.  The agency contends that this integration is hard to duplicate, so it stifles competition and innovation.  Yet this very structure has driven substantial value for consumers and investors.  The only beneficiaries of breaking up Live Nation would be those less effective competitors who struggle to match its innovations.”  (Emphasis added.)

Well said.

In our latest Liberty Update, we highlight how Americans have soured on “Bidenomics” despite Biden supporters’ ongoing insistence that voters trust them rather than over three years of actual, real-life experience and hardship.  Well, our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity have highlighted another point that merits emphasis as minorities turn against Biden in his reelection effort.  Namely, they prospered far more under President Trump than President Biden:

Minorities Prospered Far More Under Trump Than Biden

Joe Biden tells Americans that he’s helping them by building “from the bottom up and the middle out.”  But the numbers don’t lie, and the ugly reality is that he’s only dragging us all toward the bottom.  Throughout his presidency, wage gains (green) have been consistently exceeded by inflation (blue), meaning loss in real earnings (red):

Bidenomics Means Lost Earnings

Consumer spending accounts for approximately two-thirds of the U.S. economy, so Joe Biden’s crushing impact on consumer confidence helps resolve his apologists’ confusion over Biden’s economic disapproval.  After inheriting an economy rebounding from the Covid shock, Biden’s policies quickly drove consumer confidence back downward, where it continues to stagnate.  No wonder he finds himself in such electoral hot water.

Bidenomics Crushes Consumer Confidence

Among his parade of other outright untruths in his borderline unhinged State of the Union address, last night Joe Biden repeated his economically illiterate claim that “trickle down” tax cuts benefit wealthier Americans at the expense of federal revenues.  Our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity once again provide an invaluable illustration of the falsity of that claim:

As Joe Biden attempts to paint a rosy picture despite Americans’ real-world experiences, the truth is that wages still haven’t caught up to inflation during his presidency:

Inflation Outpaces Wages Under Biden

The Biden Administration and its advocates insist that the economy is flourishing, often citing the job market.  According to the federal government’s own numbers, however, job gains have slowed since Biden entered the White House:

Job Gains Have Slowed Under Biden

Following up on our latest Liberty Update commentary highlighting the deepening disaster that is the Biden Administration healthcare and pharmaceutical policy, The Wall Street Journal notes that prescription drug prices have actually ACCELERATED their price inflation since Biden’s so-called “Inflation Reduction Act”:

Prescription drug prices increased by 2% during the Trump Presidency owing to greater generic competition, yet they’ve increased 5.5% so far under Mr. Biden. In November they rose at an annual rate of nearly 6%. Has the White House considered that the reason Americans don’t believe that the President’s policies have helped them is because they haven’t?”

The Biden Administration needs to correct course for the benefit of Americans, not double down.  But time is running out.

In our latest Liberty Update we highlight how replacing Joe Biden atop the Democrats’ 2024 ticket wouldn’t substantively change the left’s “Bidenomics” economic agenda that is the main voter concern driving his unpopularity.  In noting Biden’s strange and stubborn habit of whispering into the microphone that “It’s working” when promoting that failing agenda, we noted that poverty just surged at a record rate last year, according to the federal government itself.  From our friend Stephen Moore, here’s a helpful visual placing it in stark relief:

Bidenomics Is “Working?”

In recent days, we at CFIF have marked the ignominious one-year anniversary of the Biden Administration’s misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA) by noting its particularly negative impact on pharmaceutical innovation and, in turn, the nation’s health and wellbeing.

As acknowledged by the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security  as well as groups like the American Cancer Society, Americans are already confronting alarming and unprecedented drug shortages in the wake of the IRA.

To mark today’s date of September 13 – or 9/13 – it’s appropriate to note a different but significant 9-13:  That refers to the indefensible distinction that the IRA makes between what are known as “small-molecule” and “large-molecule” drugs.

Specifically, the IRA imposes destructive price controls on small-molecule drugs merely 9 years following Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval, while waiting 13 years to impose those price controls on large-molecule drugs.  Although price controls of any duration and of any type only serve to create shortages and discourage innovation, that baseless disparity in the IRA needlessly discourages investment in small-molecule pharmaceuticals.

As cogently stated by leading scientific and medical expert Daniel Skovronsky in STATReports, it’s imperative that Congress correct that unjustifiable 9-13 distinction:

[T]o researchers like me, a provision in the recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act is puzzling.  For no clear reason, it draws a distinction between large and small molecule medicines.  As part of the IRA’s Medicare price control provisions, price negotiation for small molecule medicines is allowed nine years after Food and Drug Administration approval compared with 13 years for large molecule biologics.  There is no scientific reason for this distinction, and it will have a real and detrimental impact on drug discovery and patient care.  Nine years is not enough time to recoup the deep investments into small molecule R&D before government price controls take effect.  As a result, companies will deprioritize small molecule programs, lowering the potential to create drugs using these technologies.  Congress should correct this imbalance by allowing negotiation after a full 13 years for both small-molecule medicines and their large-molecule counterparts.”

There’s simply no sound basis for that 9-13 small-molecule/large-molecule differential, and on 9/13 we urge Congress to correct this error.

CFIF recently marked the ignominious one-year anniversary of the Biden Administration’s misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA), whose title even Biden himself admitted was mistaken.

We noted how, as a result of the IRA, drug shortages have already reached record highs, increasing by 30% between 2021 and 2022 alone, according to a report in March from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.  Another report from the American Cancer Society also sounded the alarm on emerging drug shortages, caused in part by drug price control policies.  Thus, just one year in, drug shortages have reached record levels under the looming threat of drug price controls, weaker intellectual property protections and regulatory browbeating.

This week, as reported by Politico, the same Biden Administration that called inflation “transitory” and insists in the face of public blowback that “Bidenomics” is somehow succeeding announced that it will soon release the first ten prescription drugs selected for its destructive price control scheme:

President Joe Biden has sought to sell health policies like the new Medicare negotiation program as part of a broader ‘Bidenomics’ agenda set to underpin his reelection campaign.  The drug pricing push, he has argued, will help counter inflation and boost the economy by slashing the amount Americans have to shell out each year for critical medicines, although prices negotiated on the first set of drugs won’t take effect until 2026.”

Given Biden’s shoddy record for accuracy and competence so far, Americans will be forgiven for their skepticism.  As we noted, the consequence of price controls will be shortages and less innovation, which we’re already witnessing.  Americans aren’t buying this “Bidenomics” pitch, and will pay a heavy price unless and until these dangerous drug price controls are reversed.

Make of this what you will, as Joe Biden pitches “Bidenomics” in his reelection effort and maligns the alleged “trickle down” economic record of his predecessor:

Bidenomics