Biden's domestic policy failures are mounting, too
By: Merrill Matthews, Opinion Contributor (MSN)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
It's not just the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many of President Biden's domestic policy efforts have become a mismanaged mess. And yet, having failed miserably in handling several foreign and domestic policy challenges, the president wants voters to trust him with managing the next $3.5 trillion he wants to take from taxpayers.
© Getty Images Biden's domestic policy failures are mounting, too
Here are a few reasons why voters should be skeptical.
The Emergency Rental Assistance Program. A recent New York Times headline reads, "About 89% of Rental Assistance Funds Have Not Been Distributed, Figures Show." The story reveals how badly the Biden administration has mishandled rental assistance.
Both Presidents Trump and Biden signed bills to provide some $46.5 billion to help renters pay their rent during the pandemic. But the government has failed to put that money into the hands of struggling renters, which would have helped both them and landlords, whom the government prohibited from evicting non-paying tenants.
Once the news got out about the mismanagement - which Goldman Sachs now estimates could mean some 700,000 households evicted this year - Democrats scrambled to contrive a solution.
Even though Biden said on many occasions that he did not have the authority to extend the eviction moratorium past July 31, Democrats pressured the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to come up with a transparently ludicrous justification to allow Biden to do just that.
And Biden went along with it, even as he conceded that its real purpose was to provide enough time for his administration to distribute the rental assistance funds it should have released months earlier. The U.S. Supreme Court quickly struck down that effort.
So now perhaps thousands of families will be evicted from their homes and apartments with no place to go - thanks to Biden's mismanagement.
Wasted COVID-19 vaccine doses.Here's a Sept. 1 headline: "15 million Covid vaccine doses thrown away in the U.S. since March, new data shows."
The World Health Organization and poor countries are begging for COVID-19 vaccines. And yet in six months we have thrown away 15 million doses.
Before the delta variant surge, Biden frequently boasted of his administration's work in distributing COVID-19 vaccines around the country - though much of that success was the result of plans put in place during the closing weeks of the Trump administration.
In any grand scheme such as the nationwide COVID vaccine distribution, there's likely going to be some waste.
But good supply management isn't just getting adequate doses of the vaccine distributed. It's also retrieving unused doses so they can be transferred to poorer countries before they expire.
Biden has promised he would help those countries, and doses have been sent out. But letting 15 million doses be thrown away because Biden didn't have a recapture plan is a major management failure that will cost lives.
Losing track of illegal immigrant children. And one more recent news item, this time from Axios: "The U.S. government has lost contact with thousands of migrant children released from its custody."
Getting the information about the missing children didn't come easily. Axios obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
And who's surprised? Early in his presidency Biden conveyed the impression that illegal immigrants would be welcome, and so they came in record numbers - much to the surprise of the White House.
Team Biden tried to stifle media coverage of the immigration "challenge" - because no one was allowed to call it a "crisis" - at the border. But it was clear then, and now, that the administration botched it.
Will these children show up for their court dates? How do we know if they are with their parents or relatives, as opposed to people who will abuse or traffic them? Don't ask Biden, the administration has lost contact.
And it's not just these immigrants. The Associated Press reports the Biden administration may be doing a poor job vetting some Afghanis arriving in the United States. To be sure, there wasn't much time to vet tens of thousands of Afghanis, but that's because of the administration's mismanagement of the withdrawal.
Of course, Biden is trying to quickly change the narrative away from his multiple management failures - sort of like the president's advice to the former Afghan president to "change the perception." Biden wants voters focused on his $3.5 trillion spending spree.
But why would anyone hand that much money to a president who has proven, repeatedly, that he cannot effectively manage many of the tasks he already has?
Merrill Matthews is a resident scholar with the Institute for Policy Innovation in Dallas, Texas. Follow him on Twitter @MerrillMatthews.
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The big three............................sorry yet?
Any mention of Trump and/or his supporters, directly or veiled, will be deleted.
But it's in the article JJ...
Rent assistance
It says correctly that the current and past administration gave the states $46.5 billion dollars for rent assistance.
Why is that important?
Losing track of illegal immigrant children.
Seems like both administrations had the same problem...
Just had to throw in your little racist jab?
Why not list the number of African Americans, Asians, Latinos, Arabs, Jews, etc that haven't been vaccinated? Or doesn't that fit your political slant?
I technically check the box as white (though I could list myself as just about anything as I am an American mutt when it comes to ethnicity) and haven't had the shots yet. I had been on strong antibiotics for months for multiple infections in my leg; as per my doctor's instructions I was not to get the Covid 19 shot due to a possible reaction with the antibiotics. I am off the antibiotics now; but still not doing the best physically- so my doctor told me not to get the shots until I start to feel better- which could take weeks longer. Don't cast stones, or try to lump everyone into one group when you don't know all of the reasons people have for not being vaccinate yet.
Split Personality wrote: " there's the approximately 57 million white people no one anticipated would be refusing the vaccines."
So you're saying that no Black or Brown people refused the shots
No, Greg, I suggest reading what I wrote out loud, it might help with your interpretation of what I did not say.
I don't consider data to be racist if it's accurate.
Until July 15 there were 100 million unvaccinated and 57% were white which the pharmacies and Counties did not anticipate. This contributed to wasted vaccines. The white group outnumber all the fractional groups combined.
Now that Hispanics and blacks in several states are getting vaccinated twice as fast as their white brothers and sisters
those numbers make the white group look less responsible. period.
Kaiser and KFF.com are health care experts not partisan snipers taking shots on social media. They have no dog in any political hunt.
OK, that's a fair point, thanks.
on't consider data to be racist if it's accurate.
The data isn't racist, it's how you use it that is.
You single out whites for being unvaccinated and "less responsible " yet the data actually shows that " Overall, across these 42 states, the percent of White people who have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose ( 52%) was roughly 1.2 times higher than the rate for Black people (43%) and 1.1 times higher than the rate for Hispanic people (48%) as of September 7, 2021."
The same running kff article also says that they do not have the ethnicity of 41% of the people who only received one shot.
That kind of skews their conclusions don't you think?
Lies, damned lies and statistics, eh?
"White" people number 236.5 million
Hispanics not reporting as white are at 60 million
"Black" people are close to 44 million.
Another gem from the KFF ( granted, it's a poll, buttttt...)
The insured sure are a cocky bunch aren't they?
Fuck the vaccine, I'm insured /S
Thankfully we now have a president who cares for we the people.
Your kidding right?
Give us some examples of much he cares.
Tell that to the Americans he abandoned in Afghanistan
One day I'll figure out the rationale behind this other than it being a tit-4-tat preschool game.
Because the article isn't about anyone but Mr. Biden. When one person brings that person into the conversation it fucks up the whole series of threads with whataboutisms and diverts the attention away from the subject at hand. Projection, deflection, and denial I believe are the terms for that bullshit.
Well Indies?
Verbose bunch are they not? They put our 'readers' to shame.
Biden has spectacularly failed on Covid. Biden's leadership actually resulted in a 300% increase in infections over Labor day weekend in 2021 as opposed to 2020, DESPITE a vaccine.