SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) – Utah Senator Mitt Romney continues to lampoon President Biden for contributing to economic crises in the short term and long term, this time in a self-authored article in the Wall Street Journal. The Romney Press office provided ABC4 with a copy of Romney’s article. Here’s what you need to know about Sen. Romney’s argument.
In the first sentence of Sen. Romney’s article, he calls the current economic state “the perfect economic storm.” This storm is in reference to supply chain problems, high inflation, and high prices for everyday goods.
Sen. Romney pulls no punches in placing the blame for this “storm” on the current president.
“The Biden administration did pretty much everything wrong,” writes Sen. Romney, after which he lists federal actions including flooding the U.S. consumer market with money, delaying evictions, delaying student loan payments, pushing a deficit-based budget, and more.
As far as what Sen. Romney says he would do differently, he suggests a narrow focus on combatting inflation in the U.S. Sen. Romney contends that “it’s the people with little or no money to spare who are hardest hit by the exponential rise in prices.” Interestingly, he then continues on his position that the Build Back Better legislation should be “shelved” permanently, despite President Biden’s claims that the legislation would primarily help create jobs and infrastructure for low-income Americans. Sen. Romney also mentions that private development in mining, shipping, and energy will go a longer way to slow the economic crisis.
Sen. Romney also echoes his arguments from earlier this year, saying the current rate of federal deficit growth will have disastrous long-term consequences on everyday Americans.
In the Utah Senator’s article, he does suggest some more progressive-leaning economic policies that could help with the current crisis. For example, Sen. Romney mentions “accelerating legal immigration” to the U.S. in part to slow illegal immigration and in part to encourage more people in the American workforce. He suggests that states “which know their own local labor markets better,” should help inform federal working visa decisions.
Interestingly, while Sen. Romney disparages the Biden administration for “lining up behind units,” he also suggests incentivizing workers to reenter the labor market. Admittedly, he references these incentives as a replacement for those that incentivize not-working, which according to him would help repair supply chain problems and in turn high cost of consumer goods.
Sen. Romney made no mention of raising interest rates on loans in his article, which is usually the go-to method for lowering inflation for the federal government.
