Billy Long: I knew Biden would be a bad president, but not this bad

(From Seventh District Congressman Billy Long)

People can have a bad day, a bad week maybe, but a really bad year takes a concerted effort. It's almost like you would have to be so obsessed with hatred of your predecessor as to make one irrational decision after another trying to undo anything they had done. Even to the point of doing more damage to yourself and the country than to your predecessor.

It’s been one year since President Biden was sworn into office, and his first year as president has been full of missteps and failures. To paraphrase President Franklin Roosevelt, January 20, 2021 a date which will live in infamy.

 

It’s been one crisis after another – inflation is at a 40 year high, the Southern Border is unsecured, and our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan got American troops killed. All of these and many more are entirely created by President Biden’s failed policies, and yet he has no plan for fixing any of it. Remember his pledge to shut down the virus but not the economy? It’s time to look back at what America Biden/Harris style has brought us.

2021 saw the highest rate of inflation in 40 years, and it has affected everything from groceries and gas to cars and homes. Most of it can be traced to the Democrats’ radical spending plans.

Last year, President Biden and Congressional Democrats proposed nearly $6 trillion in new spending. These proposed bills, some of which have been signed into law, are full of Green New Deal policies but masquerade as COVID relief or infrastructure.

Initially, we were told by the experts at the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve that inflation was transitory, or temporary. It took nearly an entire year, but those same experts are now admitting that inflation is here to stay.

When we look at our Southern Border, it’s totally unrecognizable from a year ago. If fact it's no longer a border but more of an 'Olly.Olly, Oxen Free Zone.' President Trump took a hardline stance on border security, and his many policies worked to slow illegal immigration.

On the other hand, President Biden campaigned on lax border policies, and immediately revoked most of President Trump’s effective policies. Unsurprisingly, this led to a massive humanitarian crisis on our Southern Border.

Again, we were told by the experts that this was a temporary surge due to lower temperatures in the winter, and again they were wrong. Are you sensing a pattern yet? 2021 saw the most border apprehensions in over 20 years.

And that’s only the people who were caught. We have no idea how many more got away, or walked right in and got a 'Get out of jail free card' and just kept the line moving. As with inflation, President Biden has done virtually nothing to stem the tide of illegal immigration. Instead, he appointed Vice President Harris as “Border Czar.” What a relief.

Another campaign theme for Joe Biden was that the international community never respected the United States when President Trump was in office. That illusion was shattered in August with our disastrous, botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, which led to the deaths of 170 Afghan civilians and 13 American service members.

President Biden gave up Bagram Airfield, our most strategic airfield in Afghanistan, before all American civilians were out of the country. This running for the exits led to a complete collapse of the Afghan government and total control for the Taliban. We left our allies high and dry, and our foreign relations have suffered tremendously because of it.

Finally, President Biden said that he would be a unifying figure, healing a broken nation. It didn’t take long for him to renege on that promise. He has spent the past year wildly claiming that anyone who disagrees with his agenda is trying to destroy democracy.

Just last week, he compared those who support common sense voter ID laws to George Wallace, Bull Connor, and Jefferson Davis. These are hardly the words of a President seeking to unify the country. Many of us knew that Joe Biden would be a bad president, but nobody knew his first year in office would be this bad. Maybe this year he will wake up to the reality that his policies have created crisis after crisis, but first he'll have to wake up.