On the campaign trail in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, Pete Buttigieg was that candidate who spoke articulately enough to make you think he knew what he was talking about. Even Democratic primary voters, however, saw through him as the empty suit candidate that speaks the language of wine enthusiasts and can fit in as the hip, millennial mayor from the Midwest. He didn’t win any primaries, and he didn’t fit the bill to join Biden’s ticket since he was, well, not a woman of color, as Biden promised for his Vice Presidential pick.
Instead, Buttigieg landed in the Biden administration as the Secretary of Transportation at a time when our nation’s infrastructure is facing a supply chain catastrophe the likes of which we’ve never seen. At the helm, guiding things like ports of entry and transportation regulations, is Pete Buttigieg, a man with an abysmal record as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and an even worse record so far at the Department of Transportation.
Having recently returned from paternity leave to shockingly find journalists asking him questions about transportation and empty retail shelves, Buttigieg, like all good inexperienced subordinates, praised his boss for the awesome job he’s doing on the economy:
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s claim that the U.S. supply chain was only strained because of President Joe Biden’s success in guiding the country out of a recession raised plenty of eyebrows on Sunday.
The U.S. supply chain crisis has affected Americans of all stripes, despite White House chief of staff Ron Klain endorsing the message that it and inflation are “high class problems.” Yet, Buttigieg told CNN on Sunday that the reason the supply chain is dealing with backlogs is because demand and income are up under Biden.
“Demand is up,” Buttigieg said, “because income is up, because the president has successfully guided this economy out of the teeth of a terrifying recession.”
No economist worth anything believes that Biden has guided the country out of a recession. On the contrary, some economists believe the economy, aided by Biden’s anti-growth tax-and-spend policies, is already in a recession worse than 2008:
America has already slipped into a recession that could be as bad as the 2008 financial meltdown according to key consumer data, a Dartmouth College professor has warned.
David Blanchflower, of Dartmouth, and Alex Bryson, of University College London, say that every slump since the 1980s has been foreshadowed by 10-point drops in consumer indices from the Conference Board and University of Michigan.
The indices are drawn from questions put to ordinary Americans about their income expectations, employment conditions and what they expect for the US economy in the near future.
The Conference Board has measured a 25.3-point drop in 2021, while UM has recorded an 18.4-point slump. This compares to a 19-point and a 21-point dip for the indices respectively ahead of the 2008 global financial crash.
‘It seems to us that there is every likelihood that the United States entered recession at the end of 2021,’ the authors write in a new research paper.
In other words, Buttigieg’s explanation of supply chain stress due to the U.S. economy doing well is a red herring aimed at bolstering Biden’s economic credentials despite ample evidence pointing in the other direction. In short, Buttigieg is out of his element, he’s a “Yes Man” in the world of the Biden administration adding no real experience or credentials to his job as Transportation Secretary.
To make matters worse, as some have pointed out, Buttigieg has been missing in action for weeks as the country’s supply chain descended into chaos entering the busy holiday shopping season. Buttigieg has offered no solutions and seems to have no grasp on the situation whatsoever:
Buttigieg said he considers his leave “not a vacation, it’s work” — as he offered no new solutions to immediately address the urgent situation that has left cargo ships idling off US ports, store shelves empty and Christmas gift-giving threatened.
He then proceeded to mention a move President Biden announced last week — that Los Angeles’s port would begin operating ’round-the-clock — and how his agency is already “working with the state [Departments of Motor Vehicles] to cut some of the red tape for issuing commercial driver’s licenses” to try to get more transit moving.
He said Congress could help alleviate the gridlock of goods by passing President Biden’s stalled infrastructure bills amid infighting among Democrats — a move that would do nothing to address the dire situation in the short-term.
Buttigieg’s literal answer to the supply chain debacle facing the country is for Congress to pass a trillion-dollar spending bill that will do absolutely nothing in the short term, or long term, for that matter, to address the issues causing the supply chain bottlenecks. It’s almost as if Buttigieg was awarded his job, as Transportation Secretary, with no expectation that his total lack of experience would be an issue.
Instead, the country is left in the hands of amateur-hour from the Biden White House which seems to crawl along from one crisis to another, while America is dragged along kicking and screaming.
