RNC: Biden’s State of Confusion
Biden may be confused about the State of the Union, but Americans know they are worse off because of his administration.
By the Republican National Committee
BIDEN’S PRESIDENCY HAS BEEN A COMPLETE FAILURE
- Joe Biden has only delivered crises, failures, and broken promises.
- Fewer than four in 10 registered voters say Biden deserves to be reelected according to Gallup.
- Just like Bidenflation, Biden’s third-year disapproval rating is at a 40-year high.
AMERICANS ARE CONCERNED ABOUT BIDEN’S “DIMINSHED FACULTIES”
- In February, a special counsel found Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” — including classified documents related to national security and “sensitive intelligence sources and methods” — in his home, garage, and office for decades.
- However, the special counsel declined to recommend charging Biden because he is an “elderly man with a poor memory…for whom many jurors will want to identify with reasonable doubt.”
- According to the special counsel, Biden displayed “diminished faculties and faulty memory,” evidenced by him forgetting when he served as vice president.
- Biden’s close advisors admit that his age has diminished his energy and significantly limited his schedule.
- White House aides say that “it’s difficult to schedule public or private events with the president in the morning, in the evening, or on weekends.”
- The White House has made several adjustments to compensate for Biden’s advanced age, including extra-large font on his teleprompter and note cards to direct him on what to say and who to call on.
- Biden has ditched wearing dress shoes to reduce the risk of falls and has been urged to walk shorter distances while on camera.
- Biden now most often uses the short stairs to board and exit Air Force One in order to avoid tripping.
- Biden has a long track record of making up extravagant stories, frequently lying about events which “never took place.”
- In what seems to be a daily occurrence, Biden gets mixed up.
- Shortly after meeting with Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, Biden called her “Yolanda” while speaking to the press.
- In a press conference to prove his mental competence, Biden referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as the “President of Mexico.”
- Biden promised to be a president for all, whether you live in a “red state or a green state.”
- Biden twice referred to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel as Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017.
- 76 percent of voters, including half of Democrats, say they’re concerned about Biden’s mental and physical fitness for a second term, according to a poll by NBC News.
- A poll by Monmouth University had similar findings – 76 percent of voters, including 56 percent of Democrats, said Biden is too old to effectively serve another term.
AMERICANS ARE WORSE OFF FINANCIALLY BECAUSE OF BIDENOMICS
- Biden has presided over the highest inflation in 40 years, with inflation still double the rate when he took office.
- Prices have risen by 17.9 percent since Biden took office.
- Food prices are up 21 percent, rent is up 19.4 percent, and electricity is up 28.6 percent since Biden took office.
- Prices have risen by 17.9 percent since Biden took office.
- Americans have less wealth under Biden.
- With inflation outpacing earnings, median household income adjusted for inflation is down $3,670 from 2019.
- Median household income has fallen for two straight years under Biden and remains below pre-pandemic levels.
- From when the Fed started raising interest rates to July 2023, the middle class lost over $2 trillion in wealth.
- JP Morgan predicts that nearly all Americans will be worse off financially by mid-2024 than they were pre-pandemic.
- With inflation outpacing earnings, median household income adjusted for inflation is down $3,670 from 2019.
- In February, credit card debt hit a record high of $1.13 trillion.
- The share of Americans in financial distress due to credit card debt is the highest since the Great Recession.
- Housing and rent affordability are at an all-time lows.
- Thanks to higher interest rates, the monthly mortgage payment on a median-priced home is twice as much as when Biden took office.
- Rent affordability is the worst on record, with a new high of 22.4 million renter households considered cost-burdened.
- Under Biden, the top 1 percent now have more wealth than the middle class.
BIDEN’S POLICIES HAVE BEEN A HANDOUT FOR THE WEALTHY
- Biden has repeatedly taken steps to unilaterally “cancel” student loan debt, including recently transferring nearly $138 billion in federal student loans to taxpayers without a single act of Congress.
- With 40 percent of student debt held by students with advanced degrees, such as doctors and lawyers, loan bailout has been called a “giant welfare program for the bourgeoisie.”
- Even Biden admits student loan bailout primarily benefits students who go to ‘elite’ private colleges.
- Last summer, the Supreme Court struck down Biden’s $10,000 per borrower student loan bailout, ruling that he clearly does not have the power to unilaterally “cancel” student debt under the law.
- Biden’s radical environmental agenda has subsidized electric vehicle (EV) ownership for the wealthy at the expense of poor and middle class Americans.
- The average cost of a new EV is $55,000 and majority of EV owners make over $100,000 a year.
- Taxpayers are footing the bill for Biden’s $7.5 billion investment in charging station infrastructure, even though less than 1 percent of registered vehicles are EVs.
- The Biden administration classified Martha’s Vineyard as “low-income” to make the area eligible for its EV charger tax credit program.
AMERICAN COMMUNITIES ARE DEALING WITH MORE CRIME UNDER BIDEN
- Biden’s policies and rhetoric have enabled criminals – with crime spiking as a result.
- Biden has failed to stand up to the radicals in his own party who pushed defunding the police and has surrounded himself with an administration full of defund-the-police activists.
- In 2022, Biden signed an executive order that limited law enforcement and made it “harder for police to do their jobs.”
- In 2023, Biden vetoed legislation that would have overturned progressive policies from the D.C. Council that are hamstringing District officers and placing them in unsafe situations.
- Since Biden took office, numerous cities have seen homicides hit new record levels.
- Other cities, including Washington, D.C. , have seen spikes in violent crime not experienced in decades.
- Police departments across the country are struggling to recruit amid low morale and restrictions on policing.
- Police departments in major cities such as New York City and Los Angeles have seen historic drops in staffing, while the Washington, D.C. force is its smallest in 50 years.
- Personal safety fears are at a three-decade high according to a recent Gallup poll.
- Theft is soaring under Democrat soft-on-crime policies.
- Retail stores, which lost $122 billion to retail theft in 2023, are fleeing high-crime cities.
- In 2023, the U.S. experienced near-record levels of auto theft nationwide.
BIDEN HAS CREATED AN UNPRECEDENTED CRISIS AT THE BORDER
- Within his first 100 days in office, Biden rolled back important Trump-era policies, including Remain in Mexico and construction of a border wall, that ensured a secure border.
- Since then, more than 9 million illegal immigrants have crossed the border.
- This includes the more than 7.2 million illegal immigrants that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has encountered and the 1.8 million know gotaways that have escaped past Border Patrol into the U.S.
- Border officials say the official number of gotaways vastly undercounts the illegal immigrants who make it into the U.S.
- For 35 straight months, monthly encounters have been higher than even the highest month seen under the Trump administration.
- Biden has set record after record along the southern border.
- 169 people on the terror watchlist were encountered at the southern border in FY 2023, breaking the all-time record of 98 set in 2022.
- In December, more than 300,000 illegal immigrants were encountered at the southern border, the highest in a single month in DHS history.
- Fiscal year 2023 was the highest number of illegal border crossings in history, surpassing the record set in fiscal year 2022.
- Migrants themselves say Biden’s border policies have encouraged them to come.
- Biden has unilaterally paroled over a million illegal immigrants using a 1950s law in an “unprecedented” way.
- The Department of Health and Human Services lost track of more than 85,000 unaccompanied minors after responding to Biden’s demands to “move the children quickly out of shelters” by rolling back important vetting and safeguard procedures.
- Homeland Security Investigations estimates that Mexican cartels are now making $13 billion a year smuggling illegal immigrants into the U.S., 26 times what they made in 2018.
BIDEN’S FOREIGN POLICY BLUNDERS HAVE MADE THE WORLD LESS SAFE
- Under Biden, Iran-backed terrorists in the Middle East have grown increasingly emboldened.
- When Biden took office, Iran had $4 billion in foreign reserves – now, Iran’s foreign reserves are above $70 billion, freeing them to fund terror across the Middle East.
- The Biden administration has failed to limit Iran’s ability to fund their proxies.
- Iran is a major financial backer of Hamas, which massacred over 1,200 Israelis in October.
- Iranian terror proxies have mounted over 165 attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria since October, including one that killed three U.S. soldiers and injured more than 40.
- Iran-backed Houthi pirates in Yemen have launched at least 57 attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
- When Biden took office, Iran had $4 billion in foreign reserves – now, Iran’s foreign reserves are above $70 billion, freeing them to fund terror across the Middle East.
- Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal left Americans stranded and resulted in the deaths of 13 service members.
- Biden is “proud” of the devastating pullout from Afghanistan.
- The country has since faced an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, an economic calamity, and a complete reversal of women’s rights under Taliban rule.
- Biden’s botched withdrawal has increased danger to U.S. national security, as Afghanistan is now “a significant coordination site for the Islamic State as the terrorist group plans attacks.”
- Rather than admit his own failures, Biden has sought to blame the disastrous withdrawal on the previous administration.
- Biden has failed to hold China accountable.
- Biden has failed to confront China on the origins of the coronavirus after promising he would “insist” on getting answers.
- Biden resumed funding for the WHO, despite China’s significant influence over the organization.
- Biden missed the deadline to declassify intelligence related to COVID origins and the Wuhan lab, and only days later did the administration release a 10-page report with few new details in an afterhours, Friday night news dump.
- Biden’s administration has failed to stand up to China on its human rights abuses like the Chinese Communist Party’s genocide of the Uyghurs.
- Biden did not respond with sanctions or diplomatic expulsions after China carried out a malicious cyberattack on Microsoft, despite vowing to hold the hackers accountable.
- Last year, the Biden administration neutered its annual statement to mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, dropping all references to CCP oppression in Hong Kong, Tibet, and Xinjiang.
- Biden has failed to confront China on the origins of the coronavirus after promising he would “insist” on getting answers.
- Biden has long downplayed the threat of China, saying “China is not our enemy,” “a rising China is a positive development” for the U.S., and they’re “not bad folks.”
- Biden led the effort to grant China “Most Favored Nation” status and supported their membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO).
THE MILITARY IS WEAKER UNDER BIDEN
- In 2023, the military services missed their recruitment goal by 41,000.
- The armed services are entering 2024 with the smallest active duty force since World War II, while recruitment for 2024 is predicted to be a record low.
- Biden’s FY 2024 budget sought to shortchange America’s military, with defense funding failing to keep pace with inflation.
- This year, Biden is requesting a budget that includes “deep cuts in a wide range of programs, delays to existing programs, and slowing efforts to build weapons stocks.”
- This includes an 18 percent cut in the number of F-35 jets the Pentagon orders.
- The cuts come as U.S. military capability is arguably lower than at the end of the Cold War.
- At a critical time for national security, top officials in the military are instead concerned about pushing “diversity and inclusion.”
BIDEN IS WAGING A WAR ON AMERICAN ENERGY
- Throughout his presidency, Biden has targeted American-made energy.
- On his first day in office, the Biden administration “issued a memo suspending the authority of the local Bureau of Land Management offices to approve leases, drilling permits, and mining operations.”
- The same day, Biden cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline which killed 11,000 jobs.
- In June 2021, the Biden administration suspended oil and gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
- In February 2022, the Biden administration indefinitely delayed planned oil and gas lease sales on public lands.
- In September, the Biden administration banned drilling on 10.6 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska and severely restricted drilling activity on an additional 2.6 million acres.
- The Biden administration also canceled all oil leases sold by the Trump administration in the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
- In January, Biden delayed consideration of new natural gas export terminals.
- On his first day in office, the Biden administration “issued a memo suspending the authority of the local Bureau of Land Management offices to approve leases, drilling permits, and mining operations.”
- Biden would rather buy oil from hostile foreign nations than boost American energy production.
- His administration traveled to Venezuela to enter discussions with the illegitimate, criminal Maduro regime to pump more oil, and later announced the U.S. would ease sanctions on Venezuelan oil.
- Biden has repeatedly begged Saudi Arabia for more oil, even traveling almost 7,000 miles to make a personal plea.
- Biden’s Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg admitted buying oil from Iran was “on the table.”
- To limit soaring gas prices ahead of the 2022 midterm election, Biden sold off more than 40 percent of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
- The administration has failed to restock the reserve, which is down to the equivalent of just 18 days of supply.
- Thanks to Biden’s radical energy agenda, families struggled to heat their homes over the winter as more households fell behind on soaring utility bills.
BIDEN HAS FAILED PARENTS AND STUDENTS
- Biden has been working to undermine parents’ rights since day one, instead taking his marching orders from teachers’ unions.
- Biden’s Department of Justice targeted concerned and involved parents as “domestic terrorists.”
- Biden slow walked reopening school for months, even letting teachers’ union bosses and major campaign funders dictate CDC guidance.
- National test results for students have plummeted to levels we have not seen in more than two decades.
- The Biden administration has failed to expand school choice for those who need it the most.
- 71 percent of Americans, including 66 percent of Democrats, support school choice according to a RealClear Opinion Research poll.
- Biden supports “racial preferences” in school admissions, which effectively allows discrimination against Asian American students.
- A majority of Americans believe race should not be a factor in college admissions, according to a Pew Research survey.
- The Supreme Court ended up striking down this practice.
BIDEN HAS SPENT THREE YEARS PUSHING DEMOCRATS’ WOKE AGENDA
- The Biden administration is an advocate for abortions without limits.
- Biden refused to name any limits on abortion that he supports despite having acknowledged that abortion kills a child.
- Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra refused to condemn partial birth abortion and abortion based on sex or disability.
- The Biden administration is referring Americans to an abortion website which includes a section for people “15 or younger” on how to “bypass” parents and guardians to obtain an abortion.
- All of Biden’s budgets have removed the Hyde Amendment, which prevents taxpayer dollars from funding abortions.
- Biden opposes a state’s right to protect minors from life-altering sex-change surgeries.
- Biden appointed a “book ban coordinator” to stop actions to remove pornographic material from school libraries and classrooms.
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) has infiltrated all levels of the federal bureaucracy under Biden.
- Biden has stripped away important religious freedom protections.
- Biden rescinded an executive order providing exemptions for religious hospitals to not perform abortions or sex-reassignment procedures.
- Biden rescinded an executive order providing religious exemptions to broad federal non-discrimination rules for contractors.
- Biden threatened to pull funding for free and reduced lunch for schools that don’t comply with Biden’s LGBTQ agenda.
DESPITE PROMISES OF UNITY, BIDEN FREQUENTLY TARGETS HIS POLITICAL OPPONENTS
- Biden has repeatedly smeared Trump supporters as “MAGA extremists,” labeling half the country as “backwards, full of anger, violence, hate, and division.”
- In September 2022, Biden said “Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very republic.”
- In September 2023, Biden said that the Trump’s “extreme” agenda will “will fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy as we know it.”
- More than 45 federal officials and White House staffers have been in regular contact with Silicon Valley tech companies about removing “undesirable” content from their platforms, primarily from conservative sources.
- Biden’s Department of Homeland Security spent $350,000 on a university program that compared conservative organizations, including Fox News and the Heritage Foundation, to extremist Nazi groups.
- Biden failed to appoint an Attorney General who would “enforce the law” and not be a political enforcer; Merrick Garland has effectively operated “as a branch of the Democratic National Committee” by targeting Republican states over redistricting and election integrity laws.
- Biden weaponized the Department of Justice (DOJ) to promote his radical left agenda, with the DOJ backing a memo calling parents domestic terrorists.