Thursday marks 519 days since Joe Biden was sworn in as President of the United States.
That's 519 days of reckless spending, thoughtless money-printing, Democrats in disarray, vaccine mandates, Americans abandoned in Afghanistan, billions thrown at Ukraine, open-border chaos, a fake White House set, skyrocketing crime, doubling gas prices, runaway inflation, and more gaffes than can be counted. But Biden's just getting started. Heck, we're not even to the halfway point of his first term — assuming he serves the full term to which he was elected.
Sure, Republicans are favored to ride a red wave in November to flip blue seats, theoretically enough to regain control of one or both chambers of Congress. That's a good thing, if the predictions hold, because it means there's less of a chance that Biden's agenda will see further progress, and GOP majorities could provide important scrutiny through oversight of the Biden administration's actions.
That said, recent developments from some Republicans in the U.S. Senate make one wonder whether they'd hold up under pressure from the White House and Democrats, but I digress.
While help may be on the way for Americans growing weary of struggling under Biden, prospective GOP majorities won't be able to do much if Biden refuses to sign Republican bills. So the red wave is a good thing because it stops some of the chaos, but it's not an immediate fix because Republicans won't be able to quickly reverse what Biden has done — or stop the damaging effects of Democrat policies still yet to be fully felt.
The damage done by Biden, so far, with the help of bureaucrats and the disarrayed but persistent Democrat leadership on Capitol Hill has already set in — but you know that. What we don’t yet know is what their lasting impact will be. All that is clear is that it’s going to get worse.
Gas prices are at all-time highs and have doubled since President Biden took office. That's because of the "transition," as he and his administration refer to it, that's just a more sanitized way of saying they're working on Biden's pledge to "end" fossil fuels.
The energy projects that Biden killed starting on his very first day in office last January won't miraculously come back online once a Republican majority exists in Congress. The regulations Biden enacted by executive order won't go away either. The American energy independence we all enjoyed isn't going to come back as long as Biden's around, and the subsequent energy crises created by Biden won't be easily reversed.
Runaway inflation that's peaked at 40-year highs is also not going to quietly go down, especially after the Fed responded to Biden's spending binge and money-printing bonanza by hiking interest rates 75 basis points — the largest such increase since 1994. Biden, of course, denies that a recession is coming, but everyone from Elon Musk to Jamie Dimon is ringing the alarm bells that a recession is inevitable and an economic hurricane is barreling down on the United States.
The midterms won't stop the economic maelstrom from hitting Americans while two-thirds are already living paycheck-to-paycheck, wage growth has been outpaced to the tune of two, three — even four — percent by consumer inflation. Producer inflation, too, paired with a broken supply chain that still hasn't been truly repaired, will continue to trigger shortages and shrinkflation.
At the U.S.-Mexico border — or rather, where there should be a border — the crisis created by the Biden administration is not just a short-term one. A record number of illegal immigrants have been apprehended — many of them released into the border states where they're caught or shuttled around the country on Biden Air charter flights under the cover of night — and even more "got-aways" have illegally slipped into the United States.
Along with illegal immigrants, deadly drugs and illegal weapons, human trafficking, and the cartel and gang networks necessary to support such operations are alive and well in cities in basically every state. These criminal enterprises — along with illegal immigrants released in the U.S. plus those who entered without being apprehended (potentially including other convicted criminals and individuals on terror watch lists) — will not just evaporate.
Law enforcement can start cracking down, but sanctuary states will give criminals, well, sanctuary. The drugs that poured across the border have already done their damage and will continue to do so. The human trafficking victims brought into the U.S. against their will won't easily get their lives back. Even if the border were secured tomorrow, the threat to communities posed by cartels, gangs and convicted criminals already here won't go away. Nor will the threat to our national security from any terrorists who entered the U.S. unnoticed and may wish to attack our country from within.
Then there’s Biden's deadly and disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan — his administration's blundering opening act on the world stage. He's angered long-standing allies, been censured by the UK's parliament, gaffed his way into calling for Putin to be removed from power in Russia, and accidentally reversed decades of U.S. policy when he threatened the U.S. would get militarily involved to defend Taiwan if China invades. At every turn, Biden's image before the world has grown weaker, inviting more aggression from America's foes. With more than two years left in his first term, what else could go wrong? God help us.
Death, despair, doubt, and dereliction. That's the Biden legacy. Or at least his legacy so far. There's no sign that things will get better before they get worse. A recession in the next year. Political violence waged by radical leftists without even a finger-wag from the Department of Justice whenever they convince themselves they've been irreparably wronged. An unknown number of illegal immigrant got-aways — who may or may not be criminals, terrorists, or otherwise — roam the country freely. Apprehended illegal immigrants released into the country, only to be taken advantage of by the gangs and cartels who got them across the border, forced into further drug dealing or sex slavery inside the U.S. until they pay off their debts. Looming energy shortages and rolling blackouts for more than half the country throughout the summer. A world on edge where emboldened foes look out and grin at a weakened United States. Criminals running roughshod through our big cities and small towns, spreading deadly drugs and violence. And we still face the specter of two-plus years of additional Biden leadership, meaning the unknown trouble yet to come could be even worse than the known.
If you think America has gotten bad under Biden's leadership, you ain't seen nothing yet.
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