Republican Senator and former presidential hopeful Ted Cruz believes it will take ten years of Trump policies for America to “overcome the failures” of the Biden–Harris administration.
On Monday, Cruz, alongside Florida Senator Rick Scott, penned an article for the Wall Street Journal in which he attacked the economic record of Biden and Harris for making it “increasingly difficult for families to make ends meet.”
Americans are still suffering from the lingering effects of inflation, and polling indicates that many will carry their anxieties about the U.S. economy to the ballot box, and the Texas senator said that a “decade of good economic policy” was needed to undo what he dubbed “Biden-Harris inflation.”
The two-term limit on the presidency would prevent Donald Trump himself from delivering Cruz’s suggestion.
Newsweek has reached out to the White House for a response to Cruz and Scott’s article.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaks during a bus tour campaign rally at the Shiner Park venue on October 18, 2024 in College Station, Texas. Cruz, who is running for reelection to the Senate, said that it would take “a decade” to overcome the “failures of the Biden-Harris administration.”
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While U.S. annual inflation slowed for the sixth consecutive month in September to 2.4 percent, edging closer to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target, Americans are still feeling the pinch of higher costs brought about by the COVID Pandemic alongside other factors. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator, it would now take just over $120 to purchase what $100 could have bought in January 2021.
According to Cruz and Scott, families are feeling these effects when purchasing everyday goods, paying off and fueling their vehicles, as well as buying homes.
“During the four years Donald Trump was in office, inflation-adjusted private-sector wages rose by 8.1 percent,” they wrote, without providing sources for the figure, adding that the “Trump-era economy” would have continued this growth if the former president had won a second term in 2020.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris introduces President Joe Biden during an event in the East Room of the White House on Oct. 30, 2023 in Washington, D.C.. Inflation slowed for the sixth consecutive month in September, but many Americans are still suffering from higher costs of goods and services since Jan. 2021.
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According to research from Texas A&M economics professor Dennis Jansen, Cruz’s figures are overstated, and the three years prior to the pandemic saw a 6.3 percent increase in prices and a 3.1 percent hike in real wages. “For all presidential terms we examine at their 37th month, President Trump had the second lowest increase in prices, and the highest increase in real wages,” Jansen wrote in a February report.
Nevertheless, Americans remain uncertain about the country’s economic outlook, with many appearing to blame high prices on the policies of the Biden-Harris administration.
Polling for Newsweek found that 51 percent of voters think the economy is heading in the right direction, with only 30 percent optimistic about the country’s financial trajectory. This is a slightly brighter figure than that recently provided by Harvard ‘s Center for American Politics, in whose poll 61 percent of respondents said the economy was on the wrong track and 60 percent described it as “weak.”
While some have pointed to a disconnect between voters’ opinions on the economy and its actual health, the gloomy outlook of average Americans could pose a threat to the incumbent vice president’s election bid given how heavily economic issues weigh on the electorate’s mind.
In Gallup’s late-September polling of registered voters, 52 percent described the economy as “extremely important” in deciding their presidential vote, the highest level this number has reached since 2008, in the immediate wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
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