Joe Biden is in no position to lecture President Trump about empathy — the former vice president is an opportunistic politician who has repeatedly abandoned millions of American workers during his lengthy career in Washington.
Although Donald Trump won the White House largely because he recognized the plight of formerly “forgotten” Americans whose interests were consistently ignored by the Washington establishment, the presumptive Democrat nominee recently insisted that the President “doesn’t even try to understand or empathize with the struggling of so many [voters].”
“I know how hard it is to be a single dad who asked to work with two young sons at home,” Biden continued, desperate to appear down-to-Earth despite the fact that taxpayers provided him with a steady and handsome salary for decades while he voted for policies that hollowed out entire communities.
If Biden truly understood the concerns of American workers, though, he would not have adopted the most radical platform in presidential history, including a big-government economic agenda that would completely derail the “V-shaped” economic recovery that is already beginning to take shape following the artificial coronavirus downturn.
On more than one occasion, for instance, Biden has pledged to scrap the president’s tax cuts — a move that would result in substantial tax hikes for millions of American households, particularly middle-income households. In fact, a single parent with one child who earns $41,000 per year would be hit with a $1,300 federal tax increase as a direct result of Biden’s “empathy.”
Apparently, Biden’s experience as a “single dad … with two young sons at home” doesn’t help him realize how much of a difference $1,300 makes to a single parent with a moderate income. Biden noted that he himself was only earning $42,000 when he began his 36-year stint in the U.S. Senate. But he fails to mention that he earned that salary in the 1970s, when the median household income was only about $12,000, or that he enjoyed steady pay raises throughout the ensuing decades — a pattern that finally ended in 2009 once Biden left the Senate.
Sadly, however, tax hikes would only be the start of America’s economic woes if Biden and his allies seize power in Washington.
In addition to eliminating the job-creating policies that produced record-setting prosperity prior to the pandemic, Biden also seeks to implement expensive environmental regulations that would destroy millions of jobs and cripple our country’s thriving energy sector.
According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Biden’s proposed ban on hydraulic fracturing would “eliminate 19 million jobs and reduce U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by $7.1 trillion” by 2025.
Energy prices, meanwhile, would skyrocket under Biden’s policies, saddling struggling households with unaffordable new costs for unavoidable purchases such as heating and gasoline.
“Natural gas prices would leap by 324 percent, causing household energy bills to more than quadruple,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce observes. “By 2025, motorists would pay twice as much at the pump for gasoline as oil prices spike to $130 per barrel.”
Of course, no assessment of Biden’s “empathy” would be complete without revisiting his job-killing adherence to “free trade” dogma.
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has proved to be one of the most disastrous trade pacts in the history of our country, contributing to the loss of hundreds of thousands of blue collar jobs across the nation. What makes NAFTA’s impact even more tragic, however, is the fact that lawmakers like Biden were well aware of concerns that it would erode America’s middle class at the time they approved the deal.
“I’m supporting NAFTA because I think it is a positive thing to do but not because I think it is going to cure the workers’ fears who have a legitimate reason to be concerned,” Biden said in 1993, just before voting in favor of the trade agreement.
Biden’s recent emphasis on “empathy” is just more demagogic posturing from a consummate politician. Judged by his actions rather than his rhetoric, the former vice president clearly doesn’t have an ounce of empathy for the American people. His policies are intended to advance his political career, not to advance the interests of the people who gave him that career.
Mike Huckabee was the 44th governor of Arkansas and a 2016 Republican candidate for president. He is currently host of “Huckabee” on TBN.