Two Washington powerhouses will reveal on Wednesday the politically poisonous dynamics of the top economic issue that threatens President Joe Biden’s congressional majorities with the midterm elections less than a week away.
The Fed is likely to trigger another historic rate hike and, about half a mile away at the White House, Biden will host an event to highlight the administration’s sweeping efforts to expand the workforce in critical sectors such as broadband and construction . A policy decision is expected to ripple through markets, the media and politics, turning the spotlight squarely on an issue that Democratic officials say has done significant damage to their political prospects. The other will detail an intensive administrative effort designed to reshape the pipeline to enter professions over time.
The difference between the two events, in the compressed political timeline that Democrats are now trying to restore, is stark.
The federal program aimed at training Americans and creating a strong pipeline of skilled workers who can work in specialized fields is, officials say, part of a long-term solution to addressing labor shortages — one of many factors behind persistent inflation which remains at nearly four-decade highs.
The Fed is set to continue its months-long ramp-up to put the brakes on a faltering economy.
Biden’s event and speech at the White House come in between midterm campaign trips — he was in Florida on Tuesday and is set to head to Western Mexico on Thursday.
His efforts to fight inflation, both through major legislation and a series of executive actions to lower the cost of living, are a hallmark of Biden’s speech.
“Democrats are cutting your everyday costs, like prescription drugs, health care premiums, energy bills and gas prices,” Biden said in remarks at the Democratic National Committee headquarters last month.
The government’s unprecedented actions to reduce gas prices, centered on the release of 180 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over the past seven months, also feature prominently.
Implicit in Biden’s tone, however, is the difficulty the broader problem presents as time ticks down to the day the votes are counted. The scale of the problem has been made increasingly clear by the Fed’s hawkish approach, but perhaps more critically by the aggressive tone of its chairman, Jerome Powell.
“We want to act aggressively now and get this job done and continue until it’s done,” Powell said at the September news conference.
Biden and his top advisers continued a deliberate effort to reframe the debate as a bipartisan choice rather than a referendum on Democratic control of Washington.
“This is not your father’s Republican Party, this is a different deal right now,” Biden said at an event in Florida on Tuesday. “And there are a lot of good Republicans out there, but they’re under a lot of pressure.”
But as Republicans destroy the economy with multi-million dollar ad campaigns, the entrenched nature of the political problem remains.
Biden is dealing with Russia’s war in Ukraine that has sent prices soaring in energy markets. The global economy is also facing the ongoing challenge of Covid infections, supply chain constraints, labor unrest and political instability. But American consumers have shown little sign of pulling back on their spending — and America’s job market remains strong.
Biden, as he deviated from his prepared remarks at an event last week, addressed an issue that White House officials have long seen as hanging over everything: Exhaustion.
“I just think one of the things that I think frustrates the American people is that they know the world is in a little bit of a mess,” Biden said, pointing directly to the uncertainty this year stemming from the Russian invasion. “And they want to know what we do? And there’s a lot going on that we’re doing.”
Billed by the White House as the “Infrastructure Talent Pipeline Challenger,” Biden will showcase efforts by both the private and public sectors to train workers in three areas in particular: broadband, construction and electrification. Union workers will give presentations on how to train workers in these areas, and the president is expected to address both new and existing efforts to train additional workers.
White House officials see it as the tangible result of three fundamental legislative victories, which set the stage for a dramatic change in the long-term infrastructure of the US economy. All three — the bipartisan infrastructure bill, as well as a law boosting American semiconductor chip manufacturing and a sweeping $750 billion health care, tax and climate bill — will be highlighted during the event and remarks. of Wednesday.
But Biden’s economic team has worked tirelessly for months to come up with policy options to ease the burden of surging prices, even as hopes for a steady decline in the lead up to the election have been dashed.
While they are extremely careful not to make economic predictions, officials in the spring saw a path toward a clear slowdown in prices by the fall — which would be a critical part of their economic path in the final weeks of the campaign.
Instead, they’re stuck looking at the rapid acceleration of the Fed’s efforts that have rattled markets and some companies’ hiring plans, inflation that remains stubbornly high and barely moving, and an American electorate that registers overwhelming disenchantment.
That Biden’s big policy wins were designed to address many of the pandemic-era factors of the current inflationary moment — and yet all will take time to implement — only serves to reveal the frustration many advisers feel as face
The legislative accomplishments of the Biden White House are concrete and significant — and the future they portend, officials say, aligns in many ways with the proposals on which Biden campaigned. The tens of billions of dollars in private-sector investment flooding into the U.S. only serve to bolster the value behind the effort, officials note.
But less than a week from midterm vote counting, Biden — and his party — remain at the political mercy of a problem they have no tools to directly control, stuck holding White House events touting policies that will take root over time. next year.
Meanwhile, the Fed – and its dramatic and now relentless monthly push to control inflation – will remain front and center as undecided Americans make their final voting choices.
