Surprise! The increase in Social Security is indirectly indexed to inflation. Well, don’t be flummoxed, explains the Spectator’s “Cockburn.”
The White House bragged last Tuesday:
“Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in ten years through President Biden’s leadership,”
Burning Down the House
Even Twitter’s in-house moderators were taken aback, deigning to slap a “context” label on the post.
Mysterious Disappearance?
Well, no, it’s not exactly the Bermuda Triangle:
After helpful users added the missing context on Wednesday, the White House’s tweet mysteriously disappeared. How curious!
In her latest “clean-up-on-aisle-Biden,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre explained that the tweet was “not complete” and had been deleted as it omitted the missing context of decreasing Medicare premiums.
Technically, admits Cockburn, the intern who manages the White House’s account wasn’t lying.
The administration shepherded through the nearly $2 trillion American Rescue Plan (which added to the trillions spent in 2020) and a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, adding another few hundred billion via the deceptively named Inflation Reduction Act.
When the federal government pumps obscene amounts of money into the economy, inflation hits its highest point in decades. Would you expect otherwise?
Is it time to thank President Biden’s leadership for the rise in Social Security checks? In a sense, yes, argues Cockburn.
Of course, seniors also have to deal with increased food, gasoline, heating and other simultaneously rising costs — but hey, at least they get more of their own money back through Social Security!
Inadvertently ascribing rising inflation to your own administration would be a dumb idea at any time — but it’s particularly pigheaded when your party is a week out from what will likely be a bruising midterm election.
Cockburn thinks this blunder might be just the latest sign of why many Democratic candidates have been keeping a healthy distance from the president this cycle.
He also wonders what the Biden administration will be accidentally owning up to next — “maybe they could get some electoral kudos by talking up how gas is $4 a gallon?”
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