The Economy Biden Wants
Plus: Trump wants to cut federal spending, Mike Solana wants to save San Francisco, Canada wants to throw thought criminals in jail, and more...
Released this morning: The jobs report, released at 8:30 this morning, shows that in May employers added 272,000 jobs, up from the monthly average of 242,000 that's persisted for the first half of the year and far more than most economists predicted.
In April, the unemployment rate was 3.9 percent—a bit higher than the 3.4 percent unemployment the year prior. In May, it slid up to 4 percent.
"The headline number is a source for celebration for President [Joe] Biden, who frequently points to the strong job market when making the case to voters that he has handled the economy well," summarizes The New York Times. But really, the picture is more complicated.
The economy is finally recovering from its recent high-inflation period, but the recovery has been slower than predicted and the Federal Reserve will probably not be inclined to lower rates anytime soon (which affects people's willingness to transact houses, for example). This new data probably won't change the Federal Reserve's behavior, so interest rates will remain high—a tough pill for Biden to swallow, as that may be one of the major factors leading to people's perception that the economy just isn't working for them.
Maybe Trump isn't so bad? Per The Washington Post, Donald Trump plans "to repeal parts of the 1974 law that restricts the president's authority to spend federal dollars without congressional approval" if he's elected to office a second time. He's claimed his Day 1 in office would include him telling every agency to find a "large chunk" of their budgets that can be cut, taking aim at international aid programs and environmental agencies in particular.
"What the Trump team is saying is alarming, unusual and really beyond the pale of anything we've seen," Eloise Pasachoff, a budget law expert at Georgetown, tells The Washington Post. But the national debt—which currently exceeds $34 trillion—is also alarming, unusual, and really beyond the pale of anything we've ever seen, so it's not clear what types of drastic measures ought to be taken to return spending to appropriate levels. For more on the national debt, check out this Just Asking Questions interview with Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), who wears a debt clock lapel pin.
But the specific mechanism Trump plans to use may throw the balance between the legislative and executive branches out of whack. "I will use the president's long-recognized Impoundment Power to squeeze the bloated federal bureaucracy for massive savings," writes Trump on his campaign website. Impounding funds, which was banned by lawmakers when President Richard Nixon abused the process, is when a president refuses to dispense funds even after Congress has already appropriated them.
Many quoted by The Washington Post seem to believe this would be a massive constitutional crisis, and there's plenty of reason to be skeptical that Trump would actually cut the amount of spending he says. But it's interesting that Trump gets dinged for proposals like this one, while plenty of Joe Biden's spendiest programs (like student loan forgiveness, which has repeatedly been thwarted by the courts) are deemed totally acceptable.
Scenes from New York: "An investigation from the City's Department of Investigation found that around 1,200 NYPD officers cheated while taking their promotional exam, yet the cheating was apparently for naught, because it didn't meaningfully improve their test scores," reports Hell Gate.
QUICK HITS
- "SpaceX received the go-ahead from US air safety regulators to launch its massive Starship rocket on a fourth major test flight, as the Elon Musk-led company works to make the vehicle operational and ready for regular trips to space," reports Bloomberg. "The Federal Aviation Administration granted SpaceX a launch license to move forward with the next test flight, the agency said in a statement on Tuesday." (UPDATE: The launch happened yesterday and was successful.)
- Canada's new Online Harms Act would "curtail people's liberty in order to stop future crimes they haven't yet committed," writes The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf. Take it from the man himself: "We need the ability to stop an anticipated hate crime from occurring," says Canada's attorney general.
- Hunter Biden's gun trial—where he's charged with lying about drug use to obtain a gun—is ongoing but looking especially messy as his sister-in-law/ex-girlfriend Hallie Biden testifies against him, talking about how she disposed of his gun in a grocery store garbage can.
- "Congestion pricing, a good idea, died because our government doesn't deserve the money," writes Josh Barro at Very Serious.
- "A widely held belief is that the Nordic countries are great bastions of rehabilitation: by focusing on rehabilitation rather than punishment, they have managed to achieve remarkably low recidivism rates. Or so the story goes. This notion, however, is largely a myth," argues Patterns in Humanity.
- Briahna Joy Gray, who hosted Rising with Reason's own Robby Soave (and sometimes yours truly, when I would fill in for Soave), rolled her eyes at a source's account of her sister's October 7 rape and was promptly fired from the show.
- Joe Biden's executive order restricting asylum seekers is already having terrible consequences:
"They aren't all asylum seekers" totally misses the point. We don't want to send one person back to persecution or torture. If that requires letting in 10 or 100 who want to work, so what? My tax dollars shouldn't go to help any persecutors or torturers. https://t.co/hoh2MOyyz4
— David J. Bier (@David_J_Bier) June 6, 2024
- New Just Asking Questions with Mike Solana (an absolute must-follow):
