the border? inflation? Joe Biden passes responsibility as problems multiply

The responsibility does not stop with President Biden.

As his domestic and international troubles multiplied, he found devious men to blame everywhere – except for the White House.

There is Afghanistan, where a failed withdrawal left Americans stranded, a terrorist attack at Kabul airport killed 13 Americans, and fleeing Afghans fell to their death from plane wells in flight. Biden blamed Trump for the chaos.

inflation? Take it with Vladimir Putin. Gas price hike is a business Greedy oil companiesWhile greedy meat packers cause high meat prices.

“President Biden can try to get past the responsibility, but the American people are not buying it,” Staten Island Republican Representative Nicole McCleotakis said.

Afghanistan

On August 14, Biden spoke about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. The Taliban was at the gates of Kabul and within hours the pro-US President Ashraf Ghani was fleeing the country.

The withdrawal formally ended nearly two decades of US military involvement in the country, but left hundreds of Americans stranded behind. The Taliban, who were ousted from power in the 2001 US invasion, emptied prisons and seized American weapons before returning victorious.

Biden said former President Trump was wrong to leave the Taliban “in the most powerful military position since 2001,” and said his hands were tied because of an earlier deal Trump made with the militants.

“There was no good way to do it, but there could have been a much better way,” Jim Hanson, a former Army Special Forces veterinarian and now head of the Security Studies Group, told The Post. Hanson was particularly critical of Biden’s decision to close Bagram Air Force Base and hand over operational control of the US withdrawal to the Taliban.

“[Biden] “He had almost no negotiating power because they knew he wasn’t going to stay,” Hanson said.

inflation

In January 2021 – the month President Biden took office – US inflation was 1.4%, according to the Consumer Price Index. It has been slowly rising from a low of 0.1% in May 2020, but has risen in the months since Biden’s inauguration.

Inflation hit a 40-year high of 8.5% in March 2022, before easing off a bit in April.

President Biden acknowledged that inflation was “unacceptably high,” but in a statement last month he pointed the finger not at out-of-control government spending but at “the pandemic and Putin’s soaring prices.”

“They have an iota of truth, but that’s it,” said Elie Naoum, professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School. Blaming Putin for this means shifting responsibility to the US federal government and the administration.

border crisis

One of Biden’s central campaign pledges was to undo the “horrific” and “racist” immigration policies his predecessor claimed. Since taking office, the flow of illegal immigrants entering the United States has reached its highest level in 20 years. Immigrant camps sprouted in Texas.

Biden officials declined to describe the matter as a crisis, and the Pentagon said it would not send troops to the border. In April, the number of migrant encounters at the US border rose to 234,088, the highest number in the history of the Department of Homeland Security. A total of 97,000 people have been expelled under Title 42, a Trump-era system that allows immigrants to be turned away directly at the southern border and prevents them from seeking asylum in the United States. Biden had promised to lift Title 42 on May 23, but US District Court Judge Robert Summerhayes of Louisiana’s Western District ordered it to remain in place last week.

“They finished staying in Mexico, they went back to catch and release, and they stopped building the wall. Now they want to lift Title 42 that would make the border crisis catastrophically worse and further entrench the lawless open border agenda,” said Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz. for the newspaper.

meat prices

The Biden administration has also suffered from sharp increases in the prices of basic commodities, including gas and meat. According to AAA, the average price of gas in the United States was $4.82 a gallon on Saturday. California drivers are now paying more than $6 per gallon, and experts say those numbers could be nationwide by summer.

“Oil and gas companies should not be steaming their profits at the expense of hardworking Americans,” Biden said in March. He also blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine for disrupting global energy supplies.

Experts said Biden’s domestic policies are largely responsible.

“President Biden took office vowing to transition the economy away from fossil fuels,” said Samir Tabbar, former head of capital strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “The administration has been less friendly to oil production than it was before and at a time when markets are short on supplies and that has had a huge impact.”

Biden tried the same approach with meat prices, blaming major producers for rising costs. Average US beef giant Tyson prices are up 23.8% year over year, while chicken and pork prices are up 14.4% and 10.8%, respectively, Fox Business reported.

Meat producers disagree. “The Biden administration continues to ignore the number one challenge facing meat and poultry production: the labor shortage,” the North American Meat Institute said in a statement.

baby formula

In February, the Food and Drug Administration shuttered Abbott Nutrition’s baby plant in Sturgis, Michigan, a move that coincided with the recall of the company’s Similac infant formula after a child died of Cronobacter sakazakii infection after ingesting the formula.

The factory shutdown, exacerbated by ongoing supply chain problems, has led to a nationwide shortage of formula, forcing the president to invoke the Defense Production Act and fly the prized formula from overseas.

Last month, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CBS News’ “Face The Nation” that the case was “too personal” for him — and blamed Abbott directly.

“Essentially, we are here because the company has not been able to guarantee the safety of its plant. That plant has been closed,” Buttigieg said. President Biden said only “thought readers” could anticipate a shortage.

Abbott retracted, noting that “the CDC terminated its investigation with no results indicating a link between Abbott formulas and infant diseases. There is no conclusive evidence linking Abbott powder formulas to any reported infant illnesses.”

Peter J. said: Bates, a former associate commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said, “The key question is: What did the White House know and when did it know?”

“A vigilant White House should have recognized that a shortage was coming and aggressively communicated the situation to American parents while enabling the FDA to work with major retailers to avoid panic buying by parents and hoarding by internet price enthusiasts,” Bates said.