Despite promises to the contrary, outgoing President Joe Biden did as much as he can to set up Donald Trump for failure, blatant moves that will hurt the country as well.
Trump took immediate exception to Biden restricting 635 million acres to offshore oil and gas drilling, a move meant to stifle the new President’s strategy to grow the economy. He also declared 849,000 acres as National Monuments in California and increased the size of the oil-rich Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to keep their underground resources from being tapped.
Biden leaves behind an astounding $36.3 trillion hole in the U.S. pocketbook, a national debt that amounts to $323,000 for every taxpayer. In December, for example, they paid $140 billion in interest alone on the debt, which is 66% of the total tax collected. Trump’s ability to put the economy back on track and turn around the inflationary mess left by his predecessor will be a defining task of his second term and could make or break the Republican Party.
While heading out the door, Biden continues to shovel money into Ukraine to fuel the war against Russia. Following Trump’s election in November, the President sent $9 billion more to Ukraine, taxpayer dollars that ballooned his total Ukraine campaign to $175 billion, money Trump believes would be better spent at home. Voters returning the 45th President to the White House hope he will negotiate a quick end to the conflict and provide an accounting of the money Biden spent.
Throwing a monkey wrench into Trump’s plan to deport illegal aliens ushered into the states under Biden’s open border program, the outgoing President extended the Temporary Protected Status of nearly 1 million immigrants from El Salvador, Sudan, Ukraine, and Venezuela. Democrats opposed to the new President are fueling a “Trump Resistance Movement” to counter his moves against the aliens.
Trump supporters ridicule the $50 million approved by the California State Legislature to fight the President, arguing they should focus instead on their land management and water resource policies that have contributed to the Los Angeles wildfires, the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. The estimated hundreds of billions in damages caused by the still-burning blazes will put yet another drag on the nation’s economy, including insurance rate hikes as companies pay out enormous claims.
Biden’s treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, dropped a whopper on the incoming administration, declaring that the country will reach its debt limit just as Trump takes office and that “extraordinary measures” will be necessary to prevent a default. She emphasized the importance of raising the debt ceiling to maintain the nation’s financial stability, borrowing that would continue Biden’s streak of adding $1 trillion in red ink every 100 days. Yellen’s practice of funding the government through short-term bonds will also come back to haunt Trump as his new administration will have to refinance $7 trillion in debt at higher rates. Yellen played politics with the U.S. economy by steering away from longer-term bonds and risking higher interest rates as her boss neared election, a move that will further hamper a Trump recovery.
The 46th President also took steps to “Trump Proof” his political appointees, reclassifying their titles to make it more difficult to fire them. Trump has consistently railed against a “Deep State” of government operatives more interested in keeping the federal largesse flowing than serving the taxpayers. The new Chief Executive’s promise to rein in the government workforce was made even more difficult by Biden’s deal to allow them to continue working from home. Trump, whose Department of Government Efficiency has been attacked from all angles by the establishment, estimates that nearly 20% of the federal workforce hasn’t returned to the office since the COVID shutdown.
The billionaire businessman will have his work cut out for him as a recent Napolitan Institute poll showed that 50% of Democrat-leaning federal employees have vowed to resist his administration, with a majority saying they will simply ignore his directives.
While a significant amount of Washington workspace is not being used, Trump will have to grapple with the planned construction of a new headquarters for the FBI, a mammoth facility bigger than the Pentagon. His designee to head the world’s largest investigative agency, Kash Patel, argues that the new building should be scrapped and the Capitol-based workforce fanned out to fight crime across the country. The existing headquarters, he says, should be turned into a monument to Biden’s corruption of the FBI to go after Trump and his political allies.
Hustling to give an edge to a major GOP foe, the FCC rushed to approve the acquisition of more than 200 radio stations by George Soros, a man who has funded district attorneys such as New York’s Alvin Bragg, a Trump antagonist who pledged to be soft on crime. The outlets are not expected to be friendly to the administration in an age of gaslighting and misinformation.
The brutal treatment of Trump’s cabinet choices during the Senate confirmation hearings has set the stage for a constant flow of criticism and negative news from a Mainstream Media hell-bent on keeping him from upsetting their lucrative status quo. Winning a record number of electoral votes and a huge national plurality, Trump can be hopeful that the nation has his back.