This post originally appeared at https://wisconsindailystar.com/news/biden-peddles-policy-success-in-badger-state-the-numbers-tell-a-different-story/mkittle/2023/08/17/

On the one-year anniversary of the ill-named Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden paid a call on Milwaukee to sell his tax-and-spend policies that the White House likes to call “Bidenomics.”

But a lot of Badger State residents who have seen their earnings swallowed up by the inflation fueled in no small part by “Bidenomics” aren’t seeing the benefits the president is touting.

Biden toured a Milwaukee manufacturing facility on Tuesday, boasting about his big government programs and taxpayer-funded “investments.”

“It’s really kind of basic,” he said at Ingeteam, a clean energy manufacturer of onshore wind turbine generators — in Biden’s preferred “green energy” sector. “We just decided to invest in America again. That’s what it’s all about.”

Basically, all those “investments” have added trillions of dollars to the country’s published $32. 6 trillion debt load. The U.S. debt has ballooned by nearly $4 trillion on Biden’s watch, including the hefty Inflation Reduction Act. According to Bloomberg, the price tag on that government behemoth remains “mysterious” and could push past $1 trillion.

All that spending fueled inflation not seen in 40 years, still significantly higher than when the Democrat took office in January 2021.

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley marked the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act with scorn.

“The IRA is a communist manifesto filled with tax hikes and green subsidies that benefit China and make America more dependent on Beijing,” the former South Carolina governor said. “While Joe Biden cozies up to Xi Jinping, American families are footing the bill for all this spending.” Haley pledged to repeal Biden’s “green energy handouts,” if she is elected president.

As of last month, consumer prices have increased nearly 17 percent since Biden took office, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s not accounting for the recent spikes in gas, food, and other consumer goods. Gas prices, as of July, have increased by 50 percent. Beef prices are up 20 percent. Electricity costs have increased by 20 percent since Biden took office.

“Especially in our state, [manufacturers] purchase a lot of electricity and those costs have gone up significantly, and employers have very little to do other than to pass along those costs to those customers,” Scott Manley, senior vice president of Government Relations at Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce.

Manufacturing accounted for $68 billion in total output in 2021, nearly 20 percent of Wisconsin’s total gross domestic product.

With rising prices have come falling real wages. Since Biden has taken office, real wages are down by more than 5 percent, Manley noted. When accounting for inflation, real wages had fallen for 26 straight months, a record, over Biden’s time in office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average worker has lost $4,900 over Biden’s tenure, even as employers have significantly boosted wages and salaries in an extremely competitive labor market.

“So families are actually poorer today than when Joe Biden took office,” Manley said.

To welcome Biden to Wisconsin, the liberal Building Back Together, a mouthpiece of the Democrat’s policies, announced a new six-figure radio and digital English and Spanish ad buy “celebrating the one-year anniversary of President Biden signing the Inflation Reduction Act into law.”

“This ad campaign will help ensure communities that have historically been left behind know that the Biden–Harris Administration is delivering for everyday people,” said at the Inflation Reduction Act is living up to its name,” said Eileen Garcia, spokeswoman for Building Back Together.

U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher (R-WI-08) said Wisconsinites aren’t buying what Biden is selling because they can’t afford it.

“‘Bidenomics’ has crushed the pocketbooks of hardworking Wisconsinites and made everything from groceries to gas to homeownership more expensive,” the congressman said in a statement. “If anything, I hope President Biden leaves Milwaukee with a healthy dose of Wisconsin common sense and starts working with House Republicans on ways to unleash American energy and lower costs for Americans.”

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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Joe Biden” by Joe Biden.

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