Fixing What Wasn’t Broken

The 47 Administration claims it’s rescuing the economy from Biden’s failures, but the numbers tell a different story.

You’ve probably heard it by now, over and over again: “We’re fixing Biden’s mess.” That’s the constant refrain from the 47 Administration as it seeks to frame the current president’s policies as a needed course correction after what they call a period of economic mismanagement. But if we set aside the sound bites and seriously examine the actual data, policies, and outcomes, a different picture comes into focus. Because the question isn’t just whether the Biden economy had problems — it’s what kind, and compared to what?

Let’s start with the numbers. Under President Biden, the U.S. economy added more than 14 million jobs from January 2021 through the end of 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s not just a rebound. That’s historic growth. Unemployment dropped to 3.4% in early 2023, the lowest in over half a century. Meanwhile, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data, GDP growth averaged around 2.1% annually across 2022 and 2023, a strong performance relative to other developed economies emerging from the pandemic.

Sure, inflation spiked, hitting 9.1% in June 2022, but this wasn’t unique to America or a direct result of Biden’s policies. Global supply chain snarls, the war in Ukraine, and post-COVID consumer demand drove prices up worldwide. By the end of 2023, U.S. inflation had settled below 3%, one of the fastest re-stabilizations among G7 nations, according to International Monetary Fund comparisons. Even more importantly, wage growth outpaced inflation in key sectors, meaning paychecks finally started catching up.

But the Biden economy wasn’t just about recovery. It was about rebuilding. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, his administration enacted sweeping legislation (the CHIPS and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA))that triggered over $500 billion in private-sector investment in clean energy, semiconductors, and electric vehicle infrastructure. These weren’t trickle-down tax breaks; they were public investments tied to domestic manufacturing, union labor, and job creation in places long forgotten by Wall Street.

And what, exactly, is the 47 Administration “fixing”? So far, its energy has gone into rolling back climate investments, easing corporate regulations, and reviving tariff-heavy trade policies. Despite claiming to support the American worker, early proposals out of the White House would expand Trump-era tax cuts, delivering even more benefits to the wealthiest Americans while adding to the deficit, a pattern confirmed by the Congressional Budget Office. On top of that, their immigration crackdown threatens to create labor shortages in industries that depend on immigrant labor, all while failing to propose viable alternatives for wage or workforce growth.

Make no mistake, the policy visions are starkly different. Biden’s economic approach relied on the government as a partner, investing in infrastructure, green jobs, and pro-labor rules. His administration supported the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), enforced prevailing wage laws, and backed Project Labor Agreements on major federal contracts. He even tried briefly and unsuccessfully to permanently expand the Child Tax Credit, which Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy found temporarily cut child poverty nearly in half.

By contrast, the 47 Administration has returned to the familiar script: deregulate, deport, and hope the stock market keeps climbing. It’s a playbook we’ve seen before, and working families have seen how that story ends: with profits up, protections down, and people left behind.

So when we hear talk of “fixing Biden’s economy,” we should ask: fixing it for whom? Because by every meaningful metric like jobs, wages, growth, and investment, the Biden economy wasn’t broken. It was working. Not perfectly. Not evenly. But working, especially for the people who make this country run.

Now it’s up to us to make sure the next chapter doesn’t undo all of that progress in the name of politics and profit.