Joe Biden Can’t Let Go of a Pandemic He Wants Us to Pretend Didn’t Happen
Since taking office, Joe Biden has been trying desperately to make himself the COVID-19 hero. Last year, he declared our nation’s independence from COVID in a speech that would ultimately become one of his biggest blunders — before the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, at least.
While he did acknowledge that the fight against COVID wasn’t over, he nevertheless believed that we were in the final lap to victory. And it sure seemed like it; at the time of the speech, new cases were at their lowest levels since the earliest weeks of the pandemic. Biden was, without a doubt, celebrating our “independence from COVID-19.”
Then, a couple of months ago, Joe Biden actually declared that the pandemic “is over.”
“We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lotta work on it. But the pandemic is over,” he said. “If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape. And so, I think it’s changing. And I think this is a perfect example of it.”
Yet this week, the White House announced again that Joe Biden would veto a proposed resolution in the U.S. Senate that would end the national emergency that the federal government proclaimed in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 epidemic.
Why not? There may be a few paranoid people out there still wearing masks, but clearly, there is no longer a pandemic emergency. Cases and hospitalization rates have been steadily declining for months, and even COVID deaths have been falling since August.
Joe Biden’s attitude toward the pandemic is contradictory. On one hand, he wants all the powers the national emergency gives him, but on the other hand, he wants us to forget the pandemic ever happened. I know; it sounds weird, but it’s true.
Think about it: how often does Biden tout his so-called economic accomplishments as if his policies turned this country around from economic collapse? For example, on Friday, the White House tweeted a graphic crediting Biden’s economic plan for the decline of the unemployment rate since January 2021.
Biden has also often claimed to have a better economic record than any of his predecessors — as if the pandemic didn’t happen, that the economy wasn’t shut down, and that it wasn’t reopened as he was taking office. In January, Biden claimed to have created more jobs in 2021 than any president in history, crediting his American Rescue Plan.
“We added 6.4 million jobs last year. That’s the most jobs in any calendar year by any president in history,” Biden claimed. “How? The American Rescue Plan got the economy off its back and humming again — and 200 million vaccinations got Americans out of their homes and back to work.”
The truth is that he didn’t create any jobs last year. His economic “success” is a mirage that relies on the public conveniently forgetting that the pandemic ever happened or had any impact on the economy or that Joe Biden took office just as the vaccines became available and the economy started opening up again. His policies had nothing to do with that.
So naturally, the question we have to ask is why Joe Biden won’t let go of the pandemic when forgetting the pandemic is so crucial to the illusion of his success.
As the New York Post notes, it’s about money.
“Extending the emergency is aimed at keeping as many people as possible dependent on Medicaid — the federal-state health program that covers more than 1 in 4 Americans — even though large and growing numbers of beneficiaries are ineligible,” the Post explains. “Enrollment has risen to unprecedented levels, due in large part to the March 2020 Families First Coronavirus Response Act’s continuous-coverage requirement, which prohibits state Medicaid agencies from disenrolling ineligible beneficiaries while the public health emergency lasts.”
In other words, Biden wants to expand the welfare state, and the pandemic emergency allows him to do that.
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