This week’s White House Report Card finds President Joe Biden on the verge of winning his $1.2 trillion infrastructure package, buoyed by a surge in jobs but saddled with rising COVID-19 cases and slumping poll numbers.
Democratic pollster John Zogby, a numbers guy, tied all those issues together to grade a B-. But conservative analyst Jed Babbin focused on the growing concerns about illegal immigration and inflation sparked by hyperspending to grade an F to the president who is home in Delaware this weekend.
John Zogby
Grade: B-
The numbers tell the story this week.
The Labor Department reports that 943,000 new jobs were created last month — almost 100,000 more than expected. While economists were expecting the overall unemployment rate to be 5.7%, the number reported is 5.4%. Cynics will say that these numbers do not take into account a lot of things, nor do they have anything to do with Biden’s policies. But I am not a cynic. These are the numbers that provide the baseline for what we have always used for presidents, be they white, black — or orange.
However, on the numbers front, the president’s approval rating is at 50%, but if we look only at those polls taken that creep into August, his rating is below 50%.
A number of things are taking their toll, not the least of which is a rapid expansion of new coronavirus cases, including both breakthrough cases and the delta variant. The president made another impassioned attempt to urge the unvaccinated to get the vaccine, and there is a spike on that front.
And this morning, Biden seems to be on the verge of getting a hard infrastructure bill passed next week. But verges do not count and are not factored in this grade.
Jed Babbin
Grade: F
It was another highly productive, meaning destructive, week for Team Biden with coronavirus chaos, another eviction moratorium, the ever-worsening border crisis, and another round of bizarrely irresponsible spending.
Chaos erupted with a new round of infections and the masking guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that demand that people start wearing masks indoors again. Grouchy Anthony Fauci, the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said there’s a lot more coming from the “delta variant” and others yet to come. There were so many CDC positions and so much White House confusion that it was enough for people to begin questioning the White House’s competence and the value of the vaccines.
A new analysis by the Cook Political Report showed that President Joe Biden’s approval ratings have been dropping according to multiple polls out this week, due to his handling of Coronavirus and the economy and inflation. https://t.co/CGKnxLaiGI
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) August 6, 2021
Amid 85,000 new cases per week of COVID-19, illegal immigrants infected with the virus are still being welcomed into the United States by the Biden administration. Some 7,000 COVID-positive illegal immigrants came in through McAllen, Texas, alone, reportedly 1,500 in the past week. At the same time, Biden’s budget proposals for fiscal year 2022 reportedly cut border security assets and infrastructure by 96%. Biden clearly means to keep our borders open and prevent border security agents from being able to function effectively. The numbers aren’t in yet for July, but they will be another new record for illegal immigrants admitted into the U.S., probably exceeding 210,000 in one month.
The CDC announced a new moratorium on evictions, this one to expire around Oct. 3. There is no one in the White House or the Biden administration, even Biden, who doesn’t understand that this action is unlawful. But they issued it nonetheless because the liberal House “Squad” demanded it. The Supreme Court said in an earlier opinion that such moratoria are beyond the statutory authority of the CDC but didn’t finally rule on the point. Biden apparently thinks the October expiration is justified because the court system, slow as it is, may not catch up to him before the moratorium expires. It’s clearly illegal, but that doesn’t faze Team Biden one bit.
We’re headed into more #Bidenflation caused by more reckless spending. Weak-kneed Senate Republicans are about to give the Democrats a huge present in the form of a $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill, and the Democrats want to follow that with yet another $3.5 trillion in spending. Our debt ceiling has already reached the $28 trillion limit, and the Treasury Department is performing all sorts of occult accounting rituals to prevent a default. As the late John McLaughlin might have said, it is metaphysically impossible to justify more government spending. #Bidenflation will rage across the nation for the remainder of his presidency and probably beyond. Gasoline prices are already higher than they’ve been since 2014. Democrats are thinking about taxing every car owner for the number of miles they drive, which will hit the middle class very hard.
Meanwhile, Iran has inaugurated its new president, Ebrahim Raisi, who is a hard-liner even by Iranian standards. Raisi is issuing all sorts of demands, and Biden’s negotiators are apparently continuing discussions. But Biden’s No. 1 priority in foreign policy is still to renew the 2015 Obama nuclear deal with Tehran. All this while Iran has, according to the Israelis, progressed to the point at which 10 weeks from now, they may have enough enriched weapons-grade uranium to make a nuclear bomb.
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Poll and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His weekly podcast with son and partner Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on Twitter @ZogbyStrategies
Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin
