Surprisingly strong economy shifts political calculations

The U.S. economy is hitting a stride, growing at a 2.4-percent rate in the second quarter in a surprisingly strong showing that adds confidence to the idea that the nation may avoid a long-threatened recession.

The growing economy comes coupled with other good economic news: Inflation is slowing, and unemployment sits at just 3.6 percent. 

Markets have noticed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up more than 4 percent over the last month and more than 6 percent this year, despite dropping Thursday. 

It's all good news for the White House and President Biden, who have used the recent string of positive economic announcements to tout their stewardship over the economy as they head into an election next year. 

But it doesn't mean the administration can breathe easy — over the economy or Biden’s political future.

Some economists think a recession is still possible, and Republicans, while more focused in recent weeks on probes into Hunter Biden's legal difficulties, have not dropped their economic criticisms of the White House.

“It's entertaining to watch the administration sit here and say, ‘Oh everything’s great now,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said Thursday.

“Yes, inflation has come down, but the economy in no way is growing at the levels that it needs to be and we need to enact reasonable and responsible budget cuts going forward to right size our economy and get the country moving in the right direction,” added Lawler, who represents a swing district and is one of the more vulnerable House Republicans in next year’s election.

The White House rebuked GOP lawmakers, pointing remarks from to Fox Business Channel’s Cheryl Casone, who said Thursday: “There goes that recession talk, right?” 

“Even Fox Business is welcoming today’s blockbuster economic growth numbers, the latest in a long line of proof points that Bidenomics is delivering for middle class families,” spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a memo. “That’s because this strong growth report is objectively good news for the American people, which elected officials should support regardless of their political party.”

The resilience of the economy has been a surprise for a number of reasons.

Market commentators for most of Biden’s term have been worried about a recession, and as the Federal Reserve launched a series of interest rate hikes in response to rising inflation, the fear was that a downturn would be hard to avoid.

The Federal Reserve itself in March predicted a “mild recession,” before reversing its position Wednesday after raising interest rates another quarter-percent.

“The staff now has a noticeable slowdown in growth starting later this year in the forecast, but given the resilience of the economy recently, they are no longer forecasting a recession,” Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said Wednesday.

That resilience has taken several different forms but has been nowhere more noticeable than in the labor market. Unemployment has remained near historic lows even as the Fed has undertaken one of the fastest interest rate tightening cycles on record in response to prices that climbed as high as 9.1 percent annually last June.

Lower employment is usually associated with lower prices due to how much businesses have to pay workers and still turn a profit. But that relationship has been called into question during the recent inflation, as prices have been steadily falling since last June while unemployment has remained near record lows.

The unusual nature of the post-pandemic inflation, driven in part by massive consumer savings during the lockdown era and supply chain shutdowns, was likely the primary reason. Price fluctuations occurred in different sectors of the economy at different times, and companies raked in record profits, choosing to keep prices high.

In making the case for its handling of the economy, the Biden administration Thursday pointed to investments it made when Democrats held majorities in Congress in 2021 and 2022. Those investments were mostly in the Inflation Reduction Act, a bipartisan transportation and infrastructure bill and a major semiconductor bill.

This has led to investments north of $190 billion as of May, much of it in green tech and industry, that is expected to lead to a factory construction boom.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) touted the investment in plants and equipment in a blog post Thursday, noting its contribution to the beefy GDP number.

“Nonresidential private fixed investment accelerated, contributing 1 percentage point to [second quarter] growth. Private construction of manufacturing facilities alone, such as factories, contributed about 0.4 percentage point, this category’s largest growth contribution since 1981,” economists with the CEA wrote.

Some key factors do leave a number of economists wary of another ding on the economy later this year. Millions will see an end to the three-year pause in student loan payments later this year, which could put a crunch on consumer spending.

Interest rate hikes have also weighed heavily on the housing market for more than a year, driving high mortgage rates and dampening demand.

Demand is beginning to rise again, but so are prices with would-be sellers reluctant to give up their low mortgage rates and put their homes on the market. 

Powell said Wednesday that the housing market has “a ways to go” before it reaches a balance and prices cool.

The news of economic growth comes just weeks after the White House launched its “Bideonomics” messaging, which was met with speculation at the time about whether they were taking a victory lap too soon.

Throughout Biden’s presidency, Republicans have hammered him for high inflation, and they sought to use it against Democrats in the 2022 midterms. They are expected to focus on the economy, along with their investigations into the Biden family, again in 2024.

Biden celebrated that the GDP number Thursday, arguing that the economic progress “wasn’t inevitable or accidental” but was due to Bidenomics — a message voters can expect to keep hearing as Biden and officials traverse the country to tout their work on the economy.

“[H]ard-working Americans are seeing the results: Our unemployment rate remains near record lows, inflation has fallen by two thirds, real wages are higher than they were before the pandemic, and we’ve seen more than half a trillion dollars in private sector investment commitments in clean energy and manufacturing,” he said.

Biden headed to Greene’s district to showcase ‘Bidenomics’

President Biden said Thursday that he is headed to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R) district in Georgia to tout investments in manufacturing and his economic agenda.

“Since I took office, we’ve seen over 60 domestic manufacturing announcements all across the solar supply chain. One of the biggest is in Dalton, Georgia," the president said during remarks in South Carolina. "You may find it hard to believe, but that’s Marjorie Taylor Greene’s district. I’ll be there for the groundbreaking."

He was visiting the company Flex LTD to tout $500 billion in investments that private companies have made in manufacturing and clean energy during his administration.

Greene has emerged as one of Biden’s top critics on Capitol Hill and the president recently has been targeting Republican lawmakers who did not vote for his agenda but have hailed new investments in their states. 

In South Carolina, Biden called out Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) for supporting part of his agenda while still joining every GOP lawmaker in voting against the Inflation Reduction Act last year.

While the White House did not confirm when the president will be heading to Georgia —another GOP stronghold like South Carolina — they shared that he will be showcasing how his "Bidenomics" agenda has brought jobs there.

“President Biden looks forward to showcasing how Bidenomics is bringing good-paying manufacturing jobs to Georgia,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said. “Bidenomics centers on growing the middle class, and is delivering the biggest manufacturing surge in decades."

"Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are attempting to repeal many of the policies that are fueling that manufacturing resurgence so they can cut taxes for the wealthy," Bates added.

The White House picked a fight with Greene, a close ally of former President Trump, last month after her hometown newspaper touted federal public safety grants the area was set to receive through the American Rescue Plan. Greene voted against the plan in March 2021 along with every other House Republican.

Greene has introduced impeachment articles against Biden and other members of his administration. Meanwhile, Biden mocked Greene in March, asking the crowd at a Democratic retreat, “isn’t she amazing?”

The Georgia lawmaker is also an ally of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and supported him for the top House spot, breaking with the her House Freedom Caucus colleagues that opposed him. The Freedom Caucus voted this week to remove her from its ranks.

Biden focuses on the economy while Republicans focus on revenge

President Joe Biden kicked off a major infrastructure push Monday with the announcement of a $40 billion investment to make high-speed internet available across the country, particularly in underserved rural communities.

“High-speed internet isn’t a luxury anymore," Biden said from the White House East Room. “It’s become an absolute necessity.”

The broadband event initiated the second prong of a two-pronged strategy to till the ground for Biden's 2024 reelection bid. The White House's push to sell Biden's economic accomplishments comes after the president, first lady Jill Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris joined reproductive rights groups last Friday to mark the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

The White House clearly sees the two issues that helped shape the midterms as the linchpins to Biden's reelection campaign. And while the Republican march to secure abortion bans at the state and national levels has kept reproductive freedom top of mind for voters, Biden's substantial legislative accomplishments and their economic impact remain largely under the radar of most voters. A February Washington Post-ABC News poll, for instance, found that 62% of Americans believed Biden had accomplished "not very much" or "little or nothing” while just 36% said he had done "a great deal" or "a good amount."

Biden plans to deliver a major economic address Wednesday in Chicago touting what the White House calls "Bidenomics," an effort to restructure the U.S. economy by investing heavily in the middle class. After that, top Biden officials will fan out across the country to highlight projects and programs the administration is funding to improve the lives of working Americans.

But in many ways, the White House is now in a race against time to not only educate voters about the impact of Biden's policies but make sure the results are felt by people on the ground.

That's a real challenge in some cases. During the broadband event, Biden pledged that everyone in America would have high-speed internet access by 2030, and NPR reports that a lot of the funding won't even be available until 2025, long after next year’s election.

But the White House also sees more immediate opportunities.

"When a bridge gets rebuilt really quickly on I-95 in Philadelphia, you feel that," White House Senior Adviser Anita Dunn explained Monday, referring to a critical stretch of highway that collapsed earlier this month and reopened last week, far sooner than predicted.

"When your insulin that used to cost $200 a month costs $35 a month, you feel those things," Dunn continued. "That is Bidenomics."

Dunn, along with White House senior advisor Mike Donilon, penned a memo released Monday arguing that Biden's focus on investing in the middle class was "turning the page" on top-down Reagan era policies directed at cutting taxes for the rich.

"Even as he faced an immediate economic crisis when he took office, President Biden recognized that it wouldn’t be enough to just return to a pre-pandemic economy that bore the scars of decades of failed trickle-down policies—an economy where corporations and the wealthy got massive tax cuts while critical investments in the American people were starved," read the memo.

“Decisively turning the page on the era of trickle-down economics — has been the defining project of the Biden presidency,” the memo continued.

The White House also drew a historical comparison between Biden's broadband initiative and FDR's Rural Electrification Act, which brought electricity to every home in the country in the 1930s.

"You know, what we’re doing is, as I said, not unlike what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did when he brought electricity to nearly every American home and farm in our nation," Biden remarked Monday. "For today’s economy to work for everyone, Internet access is just as important as electricity was or water or other basic services."

While Trump and House Republicans are focused on an impeachment revenge tour, Biden’s White House and campaign team have an opportunity to demonstrate they are tackling the kitchen table issues affecting most Americans. It’s rife with potential if they can command enough attention to make their case while Republicans are in full meltdown mode.