Two years ago—730 days, to be exact—President Joe Biden was inaugurated for his first term in office.
Amid a classified document scandal and speculation about whether or not Biden will seek reelection in 2024, the White House prepared a “cheat sheet” that was sent to Democratic lawmakers on Friday highlighting the president’s first two years in office and touting that he is “delivering results for the American people.”
The memo focused on legislation that Congress has passed and Biden has signed. The document also warned the Democratic party readers of “MAGA Republicans” who now have control in the House.
“Today marks two years since President Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris were sworn in to office,” White House communications director Kate Bedingfield wrote in a statement. “In the past two years, we saw significant economic growth as the President built the most significant legislative record since the Johnson Administration. And due to the overwhelming popularity of the President’s economic agenda, the President had the best first midterm election results of any Democratic President in 60 years.”
The memo claimed that Biden has lowered prices, noting that the cost of gas per gallon has decreased more than $1.60 compared to the previous year and insulin is now capped at $35 per month for seniors on Medicare.
Biden has created “millions of jobs” and 2021 and 2022 “were the two strongest years of job growth in history,” the document explained.
“Nearly 11 million jobs have been created and 750,000 of them are manufacturing jobs. The unemployment rate is near a 50-year low and Black, Hispanic Americans and people with disabilities are experiencing record-low unemployment,” the memo stated.
The White House also said that Biden “restored our global alliances and rallied partners across the world to stand up to Russian aggression and support Ukraine,” brought together Democrats and Republicans “to pass the most sweeping gun safety law in nearly 30 years,” confirmed judicial nominees that “are the most diverse in history,” and “appointed the first Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.”
Biden is “leading a manufacturing boom,” the White House added, citing around $33 billion in investments from private companies like $20 billion from Intel in Ohio, $100 billion from Micron in New York, and Hanwa Q CELLS announcing “the largest single solar investment in U.S. history in Georgia.”
The “cheat sheet” ended with a claim that “MAGA Republicans in Congress Are Fighting for the Super-Wealthy.”
“As we move into the third year of the Biden Administration, the President will continue to fight every day to grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out and give middle-class families breathing room,” Bedingfield wrote.
“This is in contrast to MAGA Republicans in Congress who are creating chaos and proposing an extreme and divisive agenda that bans abortion nationwide without reasonable exceptions for rape, incest, or life of the mother; hikes taxes on the middle class by taxing thousands of everyday items from groceries to gas, while cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans; raises gas prices and deprives Americans of relief at the pump in the future–all to benefit Big Oil, who is already making record profits; and puts Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block,” Bedingfield added.
The “cheat sheet” did not mention the inflation rate, which stands at 6.5 percent and reached a four-decade high of 9.1 percent in June; or the federal deficit, which was $27.6 trillion when Biden took office but has escalated to $31.38 trillion.
The border crisis was also omitted. For the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2022, Customs and Border Protection officials reported stopping immigrants at the U.S. border around 2.4 million times for the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2022. The previous high was 1.66 million in 2021.
The memo mentioned the U.S. assistance to Ukraine, but it did not include that the Biden administration has committed more than $24.2 billion in security funding to Ukraine since Russia invaded the country around 11 months ago.
On Friday, in a speech at the White House to a bipartisan group of mayors in Washington for an annual meeting, Biden highlighted an array of legislation passed during his term.
He spoke about the American Rescue Plan from March 2021, the Chips and Science Act in July 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act from August 2022, the nearly $13 billion gun control bill and the $1 trillion infrastructure law.
“Now, two years in, it’s clearer than ever that our plan is working,” Biden said “We’re building the economy from the bottom up and the middle out, not just the top down.”
Biden did not discuss the U.S. stock market’s performance in his first two years. The S&P 500 Index has increased 1.2 percent since January 2021 while the Dow Jones Industrial Average has climbed 6 percent.
Those numbers rank as the lowest equity-market showing over the first two years of a president’s term since George W. Bush, who was inaugurated in 2001.
Among Democratic presidents, Biden’s initial two years rate as the worst equity performance since Jimmy Carter, who led the nation when the S&P dropped 3.1 percent and the Dows plummet 12.7 percent after his inauguration on Jan. 20, 1977.
