The moment Biden ditched his social welfare plan and embraced austerity
The moment Biden ditched his social welfare plan and embraced austerity
Polygraph | Newsletter n°258 | 20 July 2024
Situation
Joe Biden recently lashed out at a House Democrat on a conference call when the member said the president’s (self-perceived) foreign policy wins were “not breaking through to voters.” Biden reportedly shouted back, “You oughta talk about it!” before listing his accomplishments again. He continued: “On national security, nobody has been a better president than I’ve been. Name me one. Name me one! So I don’t want to hear that crap!”
Biden genuinely believes his foreign policy is what makes him the best candidate. His 2024 platform bets big on voters believing that, too — and they aren’t (understandably).
This wasn’t his strategy in 2020. The focus then was overwhelmingly on domestic issues: COVID-19, health care, the economy. Biden campaigned on a multi-trillion-dollar domestic agenda for climate and social welfare. Now in 2024, Biden considers himself a foreign policy president and has marketed himself accordingly. His domestic agenda this time around is vague and shockingly unambitious, especially considering the cost-of-living crisis. What happened to the progressive agenda he successfully campaigned on in 2020?
Russia invades, Biden rebrands
Once Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden ditched his progressive domestic agenda and rebranded as a deficit hawk.
Build Back Better was the centerpiece of Biden’s domestic agenda. It was introduced as a policy framework in early 2021 and then as a bill in the fall. The bill was far less ambitious than the original framework, but it still contained several social welfare provisions that would reduce financial hardship for working families. The common narrative is that BBB died when Joe Manchin (Sen-WV) said he opposed the bill in December 2021. But Biden continued promoting BBB well into February 2022 — he only stopped after Russia launched its war in Ukraine.
For the chart below, I looked at all of Biden’s tweets mentioning “Build Back Better” (excluding the ones not about the specific BBB policy framework or legislation). By “Biden’s tweets” I’m including those from the [at]joebiden, potus, and whitehouse accounts that were published after he was sworn in on January 20, 2021. His first tweet about BBB was on March 31, 2021; the last was on February 17, 2022.
Between the date Biden took office and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (February 24, 2022), Biden tweeted about Build Back Better 570 times — almost 1.5 times per day, on average. Since Russia’s invasion, Biden has tweeted about BBB zero times.
Then I searched for tweets mentioning “debt” and “deficit” (excluding those not about the national debt or federal deficits — so I didn’t include tweets about student debt or trade deficits, for example). Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden tweeted about the national debt/deficit 16 times, or about once every 25 days. Since the invasion, Biden has tweeted about the debt/deficit 260 times, or about once every 3 days. In March 2022 alone, Biden tweeted about it 20 times.
There was a stark change in how Biden talked about the deficit, too. The pre-invasion tweets were about how BBB wouldn’t raise the deficit (see examples here, here, and here) or how it’d raise revenue from BBB’s taxes on wealthy people and corporations (see examples here, here, and here). But beginning in March 2022, Biden stopped talking about BBB and started emphasizing about how much Trump had increased the deficit and how much he was reducing it (see examples here, here, and here).
If there was one tweet to sum up Biden abandoning his progressive agenda and reverting to type as a fiscal conservative, it’s this one from March 1, 2022. The main purpose of BBB was to make permanent the temporary social welfare provisions in the American Rescue Plan of 2021. The only reason Biden could boast a historic deficit reduction after 2021 is because there wasn’t another Rescue Plan or a BBB to replace it in 2022. In other words, Biden failed to enact the domestic agenda he ran on, then used that failure to brag about reducing the deficit. He hasn’t stopped talking about deficit reduction since then.
^https://x.com/POTUS/status/1498851174732210181
^Alt text for screen readers: Biden ditched his progressive domestic agenda, embraced austerity in March 2022. This graph has lot of blue and red balls on it. The blue ones represent the daily Build Back Better mentions on Twitter, the red ones represent the national debt/deficit daily mention on Twitter from the @joebiden, @potus, and @whitehouse accounts. There is an abrupt end to the Build Back Better mentions just after the 2022 marker, and a surge in national debt/deficit mentions beginning around the same time.
SPECIAL THANKS TO: Alan F., Andrew R., Bart B., BeepBoop, Bill S., Byron D., Chris G., David S.,* David V.,* Francis M., Gary W., George C., Irene B.,Jcowens004, Jerry S., John A., Joseph B., Kheng L., Linda B., Lora L., Marie R., Matthew H.,* Megan., Meghan W., Nick B., Omar D.,* Peter M., Philip L., Rosemary K., Silversurfer7, Springseep, Theresa A., Themadking724, Tim C., Tony L., Tony T.
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