“I wrote in these pages a year ago that with the right policies, the US could make a transition from rapid recovery to stable, steady growth with lower inflation, sustaining the historic economic gains that American workers had achieved,” Biden said.
“Our hard-won progress over the past two years has reaffirmed my bedrock belief that it is never a good idea to bet against hard-working Americans or the American economy.”
The president said many economic forecasters and commentators opined that his planned economic transition of building from the “middle out and the bottom up” will fail; that proposed investments in clean energy and manufacturing won’t become law, and that a “manufactured debt-limit crisis” will lead to recession.
On the contrary, the economy created more than 13 million jobs, including nearly 800,000 positions in manufacturing, and the labor growth was equitable as well, with ultra-low unemployment among disadvantaged groups like African-Americans, Hispanics, the disabled and women, Biden said.
He added that the jobless rate has remained below 4% for 16 months —a level the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said wouldn’t be reached until 2026.
“Our economic recovery has been the strongest of any major economy,” the president said. “My goal now is to protect and build on this progress.”
He also pointed to the bipartisan successes of his administration in getting a debt ceiling deal between his Democratic Party and rival Republicans done. “Neither side got everything it wanted, but the American people got what they needed," he said.
The US Senate approved last week the debt ceiling deal between the White House and congressional Republicans. The resolution ended a weeks-long stand-off that risked triggering an unprecedented dent default in the world’s largest economy.