Joe Biden: The Greatest Story Never Told
Issue #533 The Choice Thursday, March 14, 2024
By now, the news that President Biden knocked it out of the park last week at his State of the Union speech is no longer news. Even those who hate the man know he killed it, which probably only makes them hate him more. Because the ever-lengthening shadow of Dark Brandon just keeps getting longer as the President continues to grow taller the more people pay attention to what the man has actually done and is doing.
But in The Age Of Baldfaced Lies in which we live, truth can be a feeble, flickering flame of light. All it takes to be extinguished is for someone to cough and we’re right back to the headlines spouted by too many news organizations more interested in manic spectacle and fear-fueled entertainment than in reporting the full spectrum of what is actually going on.
To that end, there were a lot of lines in Biden’s speech that grabbed my attention, but there was one in particular where the President referenced the rebound from the COVID pandemic - orchestrated by his administration - and called it “the greatest comeback story never told”.
From there he spoke about an American economy once on the brink of disaster - financially and otherwise - that is now the envy of the world because it is the strongest economy in the world. Biden cited 50-year lows in unemployment and 800,000 new manufacturing jobs as evidence. And that’s just part of it.
When I heard that phrase “the greatest story never told,” it made me think how much it applies to the Biden presidency. The man has done so much, and yet there are still far too many Democrats lazily saying that Biden is the lesser of two evils and that the only real reason to vote for him is that he isn’t Trump.
Nothing could be further from the truth. And if the media could maybe stop talking about his age and urging that maybe he needs to be replaced by some anonymous, fictional Other Candidate To Be Named Later That Isn’t Kamala Harris, then maybe could be reading more informative stories about what is really happening around us - and to us - and why it matters. Nobody expects the press to be partisan, just please tell the whole story.
Thankfully, Politico made a good step in that direction recently with a list of 30 things President Biden has done that most people probably don’t even know about. Follow the link to read the entire article, but I’ll list some of my favorites below:
The move: Despite concerns from FDA scientists about consumers’ comprehension of the drug Opill’s proper use and risks, in July 2023 the agency endorsed making the pill available over the counter.
The impact: CVS and Walgreens, two of the country’s biggest retail pharmacies, have pledged to carry the contraceptive, called Opill, once it’s available in early 2024. Reproductive rights advocates say an OTC oral contraceptive will help make birth control access more equitable by reaching people who can’t afford or easily visit a health care provider for a prescription.
The move: Across the Biden administration, agencies and officials have made the transition to green energy a central tenet, reinvigorating programs left dormant under Trump and accelerating approval of renewable energy projects, like offshore wind. And Democratic lawmakers passed landmark legislation — the Inflation Reduction Act — to reduce greenhouse gases that are driving climate change and provide support for green power sources. That legislation included billions for new programs and lucrative tax incentives to boost technologies, like solar and wind, as well as next-generation sources like green hydrogen.
The impact: Renewable energy growth has ramped up across the United States. Electricity generation from renewable energy sources — including wind, solar, and hydropower — surpassed coal-fired generation in the electric power sector for the first time in 2022, making it the second-biggest source behind natural gas generation. Renewables also passed nuclear power generation for the first time in 2021 and widened that gap the next year. The IRA also spurred a wave of private sector investment in U.S. clean energy manufacturing facilities for solar, wind, and electric vehicle parts, the majority of which will be located in Republican congressional districts represented by lawmakers who voted against the bill.
The move: The Federal Reserve and its fellow independent bank regulators drafted a new anti-redlining framework, which will go into effect starting in January 2026. It requires banks to lend to lower-income communities in areas where they have a concentration of mortgage and small-business loans, rather than just where they have physical branches.
The impact: While the update hasn’t taken effect yet, the hope is that it will quickly begin to direct more dollars into areas where banks haven’t previously faced obligations to lend more equitably.
The upshot: Financial agencies are still trying to figure out the best way to ensure access to credit within poorer communities nearly 50 years after the Community Reinvestment Act was passed. Indeed, the racial homeownership gap is actually wider now than it was in 1968 when redlining was still legal.
The move: The CFPB in January released a long-awaited proposal to cut the fees that large banks and credit unions can charge consumers for overdrawing their accounts. The proposal would allow banks to charge fees to cover the cost and losses associated with courtesy overdrafts — either a “breakeven” fee based on the bank’s own calculation or a benchmark fee — both of which would be lower than the punitive $30 or $40 fees that many banks impose now. The CFPB proposed several options for the benchmark fee, ranging from $3 to $14. The agency is also expected to finalize a proposal cutting credit card late fees to $8.
The impact: The CFPB expects its overdraft rule to save consumers up to $3.5 billion a year. While large banks have already dramatically pared back overdraft fees in recent years, they remain a source of significant income for many smaller banks and the financial services industry is gearing up for a major fight over the proposed rule. Lenders argue that unlike hidden resort or concert charges, the fees they impose are disclosed and serve a purpose by deterring poor financial behavior.
The move: Biden’s Department of Labor reopened the issue and proposed a rule at the end of August that would push up that cutoff by nearly $20,000 — to $55,000. The draft regulation, which still needs to be finalized, would also include a mechanism to automatically adjust that level every three years by yoking it to the 35th percentile of annual income.
The impact: The proposed rule would pave the way for roughly 3.6 million additional workers to be eligible for time-and-a-half overtime pay than were eligible under the 2019 policy, according to the Labor Department. It stands to be one of the most concrete policies to boost workers’ wages under Biden’s term, as other ambitious proposals like raising the minimum wage have been bottled up in Congress.
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