President Joe Biden took credit for a strong U.S. labor market Wednesday in a speech that labeled his economic policy program “Bidenomics,” arguing that his efforts to boost public investment, expand educational opportunities, and increase competition has led the U.S. economy to outperform other wealthy nations in two-plus years since he’s taken office.
Biden pointed to the more than 13 million jobs the U.S. economy has added since his inauguration as evidence that his policy program has been effective, while noting that stubbornly high inflation has fallen for 11 months from 9.1% last year to 4%, according to the latest reading of the consumer-price index.
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“That’s no accident,” Biden said before an audience in Chicago. “That’s Bidenomics in action.”
The Biden administration is embracing the term after it had been used as a pejorative by some conservative commentators who have attacked him for his record on inflation and government spending.
In a speech earlier this month, Biden joked that while the press had labeled his policy program Bidenomics, “I don’t know what the hell that is, but it’s working.”
Now the president is embracing the term, defining it in his speech as a philosophy about “building the economy from the middle out and bottom up, not the top down.”
The core of Biden’s policy push has been several significant pieces of legislation: a COVID fiscal stimulus package passed early in his term, followed by a bipartisan infrastructure and semiconductor investment bills, and last year’s Inflation Reduction Act that invested hundreds of billions of dollars in energy security and climate change programs.
He compared these efforts to historic efforts like Franklin Roosevelts rural program and the interstate highway system built during the Dwight Eisenhower administration.
“That’s what the bipartisan infrastructure law does,” Biden said. “It will be for our kids and grandkids, only bigger.”
The president also promoted steps taken by his administration to encourage competition and regulate the financial services industry, touting an effort by the Federal Trade Commission to ban companies from forcing workers to sign noncompete agreements that prevent them from seeking higher wages or better working conditions elsewhere and moves by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to crack down on so-called junk charges like late fees and overdraft fees.
The campaign style speech was roundly criticized by Republicans as both the president and potential rivals look forward to next year’s election, with the GOP hammering the president on rising prices that for much of the past two years have outpaced increases in worker pay.
However, workers did see their annual buying power increase for the first time in two years last month, according to data from the Labor Department and inflation-adjusted income has risen by 3.5% since the president took office.
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