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On hearing President Joe Biden outline his monetary and other grandiose ambitions in a speech before a miniaturized, virus-wary Congress, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney thought his moolah mutters nothing less than foolish, saying in a New York Times quote, "Maybe if he were younger, I'd say his dad needs to take away his credit card."
Born in 1942, Biden cannot claim youth or inexperience as an excuse. He served as a senator for 36 years, as a vice president for eight years and lately has splashed through 100 scary days as president.
Through his child-crunching, crime-abetting, town-wrecking border crisis, he has shown he hasn't learned much about fixing things, even as he claims we're "on the move again" after suffering from recent historic crises. He failed to include progressivism's attacks on the basic principles of our republic, but did equate the Capitol riot with the Civil War.
Still, Biden has mastered quite a bit over time, such as what it means to be Bernie Sanders. He definitely knows political opportunity when he sees it; he is taking credit for a COVID-19 recovery that was already in fast motion before he took office, and plans to take from the rich, not just to give to the poor, but to give to everyone else. That earns votes.
Biden has this idea, as one example, of making a couple of years of community college free for everyone, even millionaires, I guess. Community colleges are already free for the poor through Pell Grants, and I respect that, but not this anymore than I would respect him for giving me an electric car tomorrow.
An answer is that he wants to add two more years to public schooling after high school, something worth considering, but some of us think a more important move would be to offer choice of schools through vouchers.
His proposed handouts could in effect tell many successful workers they do not have to work. Jobs make you more independent and give you dignity. That's why one of the great accomplishments in the Trump years was the highest employment record for Black Americans in history. Some progressives of my acquaintance contend the economy was really not so great then, but former President Barack Obama disagrees to the point of saying it was his doing.
Well, Biden says he has "the largest jobs plan since World War II." That seems in contrast to his $15-an-hour national minimum wage that will wipe out a million jobs. Next in line is his premature, foolish attack not on fossil fuels as such, but on producing them in this country while we still need them. Climate change is a serious problem but it is not apocalyptic, as this science denier says, and his answers on that front would likely be the exact opposite of an economic uplift that he predicts.
Biden certainly did talk in a caring, positive voice, and that felt good, but compassion minus wisdom is not so wonderful, as in his not pushing harder to have teachers' unions open school doors for in-person learning instead of students receiving distance learning that could lead to lasting deficits of the mind.
Why didn't he use some of his $1,400 checks that also went to pretty well-off folks to pay for home-visiting, well-masked tutors?
His Newest Deal was easily outdone by Sen. Tim Scott, R.-S.C., who gave a Republican reply that was polite even as he talked of how bipartisanship had gone away since Democrats took control of Congress. He worked for police reform as Democrats refused discussion. Wages grew most at the bottom in the Trump years. Biden's infrastructure plan was puny and how there are great possibilities for all Americans, including Black Americans such as himself.
Leftists called him "Uncle Tim." I found him presidential.
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Jay Ambrose
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Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.