As expected, President Joe Biden made the economy a central element of his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, when he celebrated how far the U.S. has come since inflation peaked last summer.
The first half of his speech focused primarily on what he called the nation’s economic progress, including a record 12 million jobs created in the first two years of his presidency and six months in a row of the U.S. inflation rate going down. Biden also boasted that the overall unemployment rate is at its lowest point since 1969, which he credited in large part to bipartisan bills he signed into law last year.
“Jobs are coming back, pride is coming back because of the choices we made in the last several years,” Biden said, in what closely resembled a re-election campaign speech. “This is my view of a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America and make a real difference in your lives at home.”
Biden also pointed out that the unemployment rates for Black and Hispanic workers are at near-record lows, and he said that his Administration has created 800,000 new manufacturing jobs—the fastest growth in 40 years. A record 10 million Americans applied to start new businesses over the last two years, he added.
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But some of Biden’s allies and the nation’s top economists thought the President should have used more of his speech to try to reach Americans still anxious over their personal financial situations and the country’s future, rather than trumpet a list of accomplishments and take credit for steering the economy back on track.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll released Sunday found that four in 10 Americans say they are financially worse off since Biden took office. That same poll found that 62% of…
