Pipiticantiks to All About United States President Joe Biden
	Joe Biden vs. Elon Musk in war of words over state of US economy now

Here Who are you gonna believe: the world’s richest man or the president with plunging poll numbers?

Billionaire Elon Musk has such a “super bad feeling” about the U.S, economy under President Biden that he plans to lay off about 10% of the workers at his Tesla electric car company, it emerged Friday.

Biden reacted to the tech mogul’s gloomy outlook with sarcasm — and then took a jab at his SpaceX company’s upcoming mission.

Joe Biden vs. Elon Musk in war of words over state of US economy

“Lots of luck on his trip to the moon,” Biden said of Musk during an extended weekend trip to his Delaware beach home.

Musk snarked back on Twitter with a link to a 2021 NASA press release about SpaceX winning a $2.89 billion contract to send the next American astronauts to the moon in preparation for an eventual trip to Mars, where Musk plans to establish a human colony.

“Thanks Mr President!” he added.

The war of words erupted against the backdrop of Musk’s new status as the No. 1 enemy of progressives, who are infuriated that he plans to buy Twitter and turn it into a platform for unregulated free speech, which proponents say would give conservative viewpoints a footing on the liberal-dominated social media site.

On April 15, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) sarcastically wished Musk a “Happy Tax Day,” noting that he reportedly paid no federal income tax in 2018 — even though he said he’d pay a record $11 billion on his 2021 earnings.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has also accused Musk of having “an ego problem” and last week told Bloomberg she wanted to ditch her Tesla Model 3 for an electric vehicle made by unionized workers.

Musk is an outspoken opponent of unions who recently tweeted that he planned to stop voting for Democrats “because they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.”

“Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold,” he added.

On Friday, Reuters said it obtained emails showing that Musk told Tesla executives on Thursday to “pause all hiring worldwide.”

In a follow-up email to employees, Musk said that the company would reduce its salaried headcount by 10% because it’s “overstaffed in many areas” but that “hourly headcount will increase,” according to Reuters.

“Note, this does not apply to anyone actually building cars, battery packs or installing solar,” Musk reportedly said.

Tesla and its subsidiaries employed nearly 100,000 people last year, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that didn’t break down the numbers of salaried and hourly workers.

Musk’s emails followed repeated warnings from him that the US faced the risk of a recession.

“Elon Musk has a uniquely informed insight into the global economy. We believe that a message from him would carry high credibility,” Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said in a report.

And while demand for Teslas and other electric vehicles has remained strong, analyst Frank Schwope of the German bank NordLB said, “It is always better to introduce austerity measures in good times than in bad times.”

“I see the statements as a forewarning and a precautionary measure,” Schwope added.

Other leading execs have also been warning about the possibility of an American recession amid inflation that last month surged to 8.5%, the highest it’s been in more than 40 years.

“That hurricane is right out there down the road coming our way,” JPMorgan Chase chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon said Wednesday.

Biden — who scored a dismal 40% approval rating in a Rasmussen Reports poll Friday — contrasted Musk’s corporate cutbacks with Ford’s Thursday announcement that it planned to add 6,200 factory jobs in Michigan, Missouri and Ohio to boost production of electric vehicles.

“While Elon Musk is talking about that, Ford is increasing their investment overwhelmingly,” he said.

Biden noted that the new hires would be “union employees, I might add.”

The president also touted the May jobs report released by the Labor Department on Friday, saying that the U.S. had made “the most robust recovery in modern history.”

“The job market is the strongest it’s been since just after World War II,” he claimed.

The monthly statistics showed the nation’s employers continued their hiring streak by adding 390,000 jobs, keeping the unemployment rate at 3.6%, just above a half-century low.

But while job growth remained steady, May’s number marked the lowest monthly gain in a year and stock market indexes fell on expectations that the Federal Reserve would continue raising interest rates in a bid to ease inflation.

The Fed’s moves have already caused mortgage rates to spike, pushing down home sales, and increased the cost of borrowing for businesses seeking to invest in new buildings and equipment in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Biden was pressed on the subject of inflation, a key factor in his pathetic poll numbers.

“There’s no denying prices, particularly around gasoline and food, are real problems,” he said.

“I understand that families who are struggling probably don’t care why prices rose. They just want to bring them down.”

Joe Biden brushes off Elon Musk's warnings about the economy while touting May jobs report

President Joe Biden on Friday brushed off economic warnings from Tesla CEO Elon Musk and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon as he touted May's jobs report, saying the nation is likely to see more moderate gains as his administration struggles to get a handle on high inflation.

The President argued the nation is entering a new phase of "stable, steady growth" amid its recovery from the coronavirus pandemic as he touted Friday's jobs report that showed the US added 390,000 jobs in May and the unemployment rate stayed at 3.6%.

Biden pointed to new investments and jobs added from Ford, Chrysler and Intel when asked about Musk's recent comments that he has a "super bad feeling" about the economy and wants to cut about 10% of jobs at Tesla and Dimon's warning that the economy is headed for a "hurricane."

"While Elon Musk is talking about that, Ford is increasing their investment overwhelmingly. I think Ford is increasing investment building new electric vehicles, 6,000 new employees -- union employees, I might add -- in the Midwest. The former Chrysler corporation ... they are also making similar investments in electric vehicles. Intel is adding 20,000 new jobs making computer chips," Biden said.

"So, you know, lots of luck on his trip to the moon," the President said about the SpaceX CEO. Musk responded to that barb in a tweet, linking to a 2021 NASA news release announcing its partnership with SpaceX for its Artemis program to develop a commercial moon lander and saying, "Thanks Mr. President!"

As the President touted last month's jobs report and projected confidence in the nation's economic trajectory, he also acknowledged many Americans "remain anxious" about high gas and food prices.

Biden again placed blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, while also saying, "I understand that families who are struggling probably don't care why the prices are up. They just want them to go down."
The President assured the American people he was doing "everything I can on my own to help working families during this stretch of higher prices," but urged Congress to pass proposals he has put forward to lower costs.

The tempering of expectations about economic gains from the President comes as inflation is running at a near-four-decade high and concerns about a recession are mounting. In order to help get inflation under control, the Federal Reserve said it would hike its interest rates by a half-percentage point -- the largest jump in 22 years.

"We aren't likely to see the kind of blockbuster job reports month after month like we had over this past year, but that's a good thing. That's a sign of a healthy economy," the President argued.

Earlier this week, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen acknowledged she had failed to anticipate how long high inflation would continue to affect Americans. Yellen told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that she was "was wrong then about the path that inflation would take," when asked about her comments from 2021 that inflation posed only a "small risk."

A number of top economic aides to the President have been taking to the airwaves to push the message that Biden is focused on bringing down consumer prices in an attempt to boost the President's low approval ratings. The White House recently launched a month-long effort to signal heavy focus on the economy less than six months out from this fall's midterm elections.

President Joe Biden has said that he is considering demolishing the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 young children and two teachers were shot and killed last week in one of the worst mass shootings in US history.

State Senator Roland Gutierrez told KSAT that the president promised to provide federal resources to potentially raze Robb Elementary School and build a new campus in the community left heartbroken by the senseless massacre.

Joe Biden suggests demolishing Uvalde school after mass shooting: ‘Raze that school, build a new one’

“He said, ‘I’m not going away. I’m going to bring you resources. We’re going to look to raze that school, build a new one,’” said the Democrat, who represents Uvalde.

“I can’t tell you how many little children that I’ve talked to that don’t want to go into that building. They’re just traumatized. They’re just destroyed.”

The president and First Lady Jill Biden visited the site of the massacre on Sunday where they spent time at a makeshift memorial set up for the 21 victims and lay a bouquet of white flowers.

Mr Biden wiped tears from his eyes as he looked at photographs of the murdered nine, 10 and 11-year-old children and two teachers.

Speaking to local lawmakers, Mr Biden also said that he was “looking to get real money for healthcare” for the grieving community members.

“This is a community that is going to need therapy. There is one psychiatrist in Uvalde, very few mental health therapists. We’re going to change that. It is a must,” said Mr Gutierrez.

The sites of mass shootings are often torn down as survivors struggle to return to the place of trauma while there are also concerns about such places attracting fanatics.

Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was demolished after 20 students aged six and seven years old and six staff members were shot and killed by 20-year-old gunman Adam Lanza back in 2012.

A new $50m school was built on the same land.

The school district for Columbine High School in Colorado was also considering tearing down the building saying that the site had become “a macabre source of inspiration and motivation” for people with “a morbid fascination” for the 1999 mass shooting that left 12 students and one teacher dead.

Hundreds of people had sought to enter the campus in the years after the attack, including 18-year-old Sol Pais who travelled to Colorado from her home in Florida armed with a shotgun and ammunition in 2019, sending the school into lockdown.

However, the proposal to demolish the site was shelved in 2019 following mixed opinions from the local community.

During the president’s visit to Uvalde on Sunday, he was met by the desperate pleas of victims’ families who shouted “do something” as he left a midday mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

Mr Biden promised: “We will.”

In the last two weeks alone, Mr Biden has travelled to comfort two communities torn apart by gun violence.

Just 10 days before the Uvalde massacre, a self-proclaimed white supremacis and racist shot dead 10 Black people and injured several others in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott was met with boos and jeers as he joined the Bidens at the site of the massacre.

The Republican, who relaxed gun laws even further in the state last year, has come under fire in the aftermath of the shooting as pressure is building on lawmakers to introduce gun reform legislation and put an end to the surge in mass shootings devastating communities across the country.

While Mr Abbott cancelled his in-person speech at the NRA conference over the weekend, he still sent a pre-recorded message to the crowd where he continued to claim that gun laws don’t stop “madmen” from carrying out shootings.

Gunman Salvador Ramos legally bought two AR-15 rifles and 1,657 rounds of ammunition in the days after his 18th birthday on 16 May.

On 24 May he then shot his grandmother in the face before driving towards Robb Elementary School in the family’s truck.

He abandoned the vehicle in a ditch close to the school and entered the building through a door that was propped open.

Once inside, Ramos barricaded himself in a classroom where he shot dead 19 students and two teachers.

He was finally shot dead by Border Patrol agents after officials stormed the classroom.

The Justice Department has launched a probe into the handling of the situation after local officials admitted that critical mistakes were made.

Officers on the scene hung back, taking more than an hour to enter the barricaded classroom while gunshots continued to ring out and desperate children trapped inside called 911 begging for help.

Justice Department to probe law enforcement response
Still, in the most concrete sign of a federal government response to the Uvalde massacre last Tuesday, the Justice Department said it would review the law enforcement response during the killings at Robb Elementary School. CNN has reported that 19 law enforcement officers stood outside the classroom where the children died for 50 minutes waiting for room keys and tactical equipment. The revelations raised the agonizing possibilities that these departures from active shooter protocols could have cost lives.

On the legislative front, Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, said on CNN's "State of the Union" that he sensed a "different feeling" among GOP colleagues given the horror of the atrocity against young children in Texas. But he cautioned any eventual agreement will be limited.

And on the same show, Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas underscored the limited opening for compromise in the GOP position. He rejected proposals such as universal background checks for gun purchases, red flag laws to keep guns away from people seen as a threat and prohibitions on people under the age of 21 buying powerful semi-automatic rifles. Like many Republicans, he called for enforcing school security. The level of weaponry, training and security needed would cost many millions of dollars in an often underfunded public education system and require kids to spend their formative years effectively under heavy guard. Crenshaw's arguments were symptomatic of the position that any gun control measures would be effectively un-American -- an outlook that weighs heavily against any effective action in Congress.

The cost of this absolutist philosophical stance, which leads to the widespread availability of deadly weapons and regular mass killings, was painfully revealed in a heart-rending interview conducted by CNN's Dana Bash with Adrian Alonzo, who spent all day Tuesday trying to find his niece, Ellie Garcia, only to discover she was among those who perished.

"By far the worst day of my life. And I'll never forget that day. I can replay those hours so vividly in my mind and it's just etched in my mind," Alonzo said.
Ellie would have turned 10 next Saturday.

Trump pivots from mourning to politics
While the President's power may be limited, he did his emotional duty and more Sunday, spending three hours with bereaved families on Sunday afternoon. At one point, with the first lady by his side, he poignantly embraced Mandy Gutierrez, the principal of Robb Elementary School, next to a growing pile of flowers at an impromptu memorial.

Ex-President Donald Trump made no such journey, choosing instead to cement his standing with GOP base voters at a time when his total control over his own movement is being questioned ahead of a possible 2024 White House campaign.

Trump appeared at the National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action's annual leadership forum in Houston on Friday, less than 300 miles away from Uvalde, and read out the names of each of the children and teachers massacred.
"Each precious young soul that was taken is an incomprehensible loss," Trump said, but quickly pivoted to politics, lashing out at Biden and other Democrats for raising the issue of gun safety overhauls after massacres in Texas and earlier this month in Buffalo, New York, both of which were conducted by 18-year-olds with legally bought semi-automatic weapons.

He argued that it was not fair for law-abiding gun owners to be deprived of such weapons because of the actions of "sick and demonic" attackers. He proposed more guns in schools to keep kids safe and for the turning of school buildings into fortresses.

And Trump spelled out the argument that even small reforms are a ruse to confiscate Americans' guns, points often used by the NRA and other conservatives.

"Once they get the first step, they'll take the second step, the third, the fourth, and then you'll have a whole different look at the Second Amendment," Trump said.

The notion that even horrific carnage like that which unfolded last week in Texas must never diminish the magnitude of the freedom of Americans to own high-powered weapons of war resonates in red, more rural states usually represented by Republicans, where Trump remains highly popular. It also helps explains why even those GOP senators who might be willing to take modest steps to keep deadly weapons out of the hands of killers find it such a tough vote and why it's hard to meet the 60-vote threshold needed to pass major legislation -- a function of Senate rules that even some moderate Democrats are not willing to entertain changing.

One Republican who is shifting his position is Rep. Adam Kinzinger. The Illinois congressman said he was now open to a ban on AR-15 rifles following a flurry of mass shootings.

"Look, I have opposed a ban, you know, fairly recently. I think I'm open to a ban now. It's going to depend on what it looks like because there's a lot of nuances on what constitutes, you know, certain things," Kinzinger told CNN's Bash on "State of the Union" when asked if he still opposed "a ban on the kind of assault weapons that were used in the shooting."

Kinzinger, however, is hardly a representative sample of the GOP since he has freed himself from party orthodoxy by breaking with Trump -- including over his election fraud lies. He has decided not to run for reelection in the fall and is therefore no longer beholden to GOP activists who would consider his comment as heresy.

But the argument that any gun restrictions would unacceptably infringe the rights of law-abiding gun owners is inherently a political one. While the Constitution says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed, it does not state that Americans have the right to have any weapon of their choice, especially those that fire at a rate of lethality that the founders could never have imagined. And the campaign against tightening gun laws prioritizes the rights of gun owners over those of innocent victims, like those in Texas who last week had the right to life destroyed in an instant.

So entrenched are these positions that the sense of helplessness in the face of repeated massacres seems unlikely to dissipate quickly. It's easy to imagine Biden and the first lady appearing at yet another vigil for victims of mass carnage soon. For the President, doing "something" might be impossible.

Biden says pain ‘palpable’ in Uvalde as memorial services for shooting victims to begin

The first memorial services for the 19 children and two teachers killed in a mass shooting at their elementary school in Uvalde began on Monday, a day after Joe Biden visited the small south Texas city and was urged by residents to take action on gun safety laws.

Returning to Washington on Monday morning, the US president, wearing a black suit, talked about the “palpable” pain in Uvalde.

Asked by a reporter on the south lawn outside the White House whether he felt more motivated to act on guns now, Biden said: “I’ve been pretty motivated all along. The folks who were victimized, their families…the pain is palpable. I think a lot of it is unnecessary. I’m going to continue to push.”

Republicans in the US Senate have blocked meaningful federal legislation on gun control for many years. Biden said he had not had been negotiating with Republicans in the current round of talks underway on Capitol Hill, but he added that: “I think things have gotten so bad that everybody is getting more rational about it.”

US vice-president Kamala Harris called on Saturday for a US assault rifle ban, as she attended the final funeral for victims killed in a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, just over two weeks ago, where an assault rifle was used in a racist attack at a supermarket in a majority Black neighborhood.

High capacity, semi-automatic military-style assault rifles were used in both the Buffalo and Uvalde shootings, both purchased legally.

Biden said on Monday that such weapons made no sense in the hands of the general public.

“There’s only one reason for something that can fire 100 shots…there’s simply no rational basis for it in terms of self protection, hunting.”

In Uvalde, relatives, school mates and friends of Amerie Jo Garza, who turned 10 on 10 May, just two weeks before she was gunned down, will gather on Monday at the funeral home directly across the street from Robb elementary school where the massacre happened last Tuesday.

Terrified children had fled to the Hillcrest Memorial funeral home a few yards away as the gunman wreaked carnage at the school, also killing two teachers, and now Amerie Jo and more of the dead are there in caskets, waiting to be laid to rest in the town devastated by a senseless atrocity.

Amerie Jo Garza will be buried on Tuesday, one week after the shooting, with a service at the Sacred Heart Catholic church in Uvalde, where the US president and first lady Jill Biden attended a service during their visit on Sunday, before meeting with bereaved families, survivors and first responders.

Also on Monday, at another funeral home, there is a wake for Maite Rodriguez, also 10, with her funeral also scheduled for Tuesday. Her obituary said she dreamt of becoming a marine biologist, with a picture of a dolphin and the girl’s smiling face.

Many other funerals will follow in a sickening series over several weeks, as the 21 victims in a place with a population of less than 16,000 are mourned and the funeral homes struggle to cope.

Even as the city is in shock, parents are demanding safety for their children from gun violence – shouting out as much to Biden and Texas governor Greg Abbott on Sunday – but asking more agonizing questions about why armed police waited for more than an hour outside the classroom where the gunman was killing so many.

One onlooker during Biden’s visit to Uvalde shouted out: “Our children do not deserve this”, another called out “do something”, to which he responded “We will” in his only public comments on Sunday.

Amerie Jo’s family described her as a “sassy little diva”. Her father, Alfred Garza, criticized inaction on gun safety laws, which allowed an 18-year-old local man legally to buy assault rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition that he used to perpetrate the killings last week.

“We should have more restrictions, especially if these kids [the gunmen] are not in their right state of mind and all they want to do is just hurt people, especially innocent children going to school,” Garza said.

As well as demands for gun safety, agonized questions continue to pile up over why local armed police waited for more than an hour outside the classroom where the teenage gunman was killing so many, seemingly violating state policy.

Garza said his daughter had received a cellphone for her birthday and used it to dial the 911 emergency number as the shooting unfolded in her classroom. But the series of calls made by children and adults at the school were in vain.

The US Department of Justice is now going to review the police response. Federal agents from border patrol entered the classroom and shot dead the gunman, Salvador Ramos, an estimated 80 minutes after he entered the school and locked himself inside with his victims.

Parent Javier Cazares had raced to Robb elementary, his daughter’s school, when he heard there was a shooting, leaving his truck running with the door open as he ran into the school yard. He is a gun owner but, in his rush in the emergency, he didn’t have it with him.

He recounted how he spent the next 35 to 45 excruciating minutes scanning the children fleeing school for his nine-year-old “firecracker” daughter Jacklyn.

All the while, he yearned to run in himself – and grew increasingly agitated, along with other parents, that the police weren’t doing more to stop the gunman.

“A lot of us were arguing with the police, ‘You all need to go in there. You all need to do your jobs,”’ said Cazares, an Army veteran. “We were ready to go to work and rush in.”

Uvalde is a predominantly Latino community that sits among vegetable fields halfway between San Antonio and the US-Mexico border.

The tragedy represents the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook, Connecticut, in December, 2012, when 26 people were killed at the elementary school.

There are a lot of bad numbers kicking around the political world for President Joe Biden and his party in Congress at the moment, but none may be worse than this one: -45.

That's Gallup's most recent Economic Confidence Index number, which "summarizes Americans' ratings of current economic conditions and whether the economy is getting better or worse." The index ranges from +100 (very good) to -100 (very bad). The rating from May of -45 is the public's most negative view of the economy Gallup has measured since the end of the Great Recession in early 2009.

This is a disastrous economic number for Joe Biden and Democrats

The numbers inside Gallup's index provide more daunting news for Democrats. Just 14% of Americans said that economic conditions in the US are "excellent" or "good." More than three times that number -- 46% -- said economic conditions were "poor" and 39% rated them as "only fair." That's even worse than where Gallup found things in April, when 1 in 5 Americans said that the state of the economy was either "excellent" or "good," while 42% said they were "poor."

Gallup's survey is far from a one-off. In the latest polling from CNN released last month, just 23% of Americans rated economic conditions as even somewhat good. That's down drastically from the 37% who said the same in December 2021 and precipitously from the 54% who said the same in April 2021.

Overall, CNN's poll found that Americans' views of the economy are the worst they have been in a decade.

Gallup's latest numbers came out on the same day that Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen acknowledged to CNN's Wolf Blitzer that she had made a mistake when she said in 2021 that inflation only posed a "small risk."

"I think I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take," Yellen said. "There have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy that have boosted energy and food prices and supply bottlenecks that have affected our economy badly that I didn't -- at the time -- didn't fully understand, but we recognize that now."

Which, speaking as an economist, might be right and true. But in the current political moment for the Treasury secretary to admit this publicly is a big problem.

All of this negative news on how people perceive the economy comes as the Biden White House -- and the President himself -- seems to have finally grasped just how dire their political situation is on the economy.

On Tuesday, Biden met with Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and insisted he was laser-focused on inflation. "I'm meeting with the chairman today and Secretary Yellen to discuss my top priority, that is addressing inflation in order to transition from historic recovery to a steady growth for American families," Biden said. "And my plan is to address inflation, starts with a simple proposition: respect the Fed, respect the Fed's independence, which I have done and will continue to do."

And that meeting came a day after Biden published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which he laid out his plan for lowering inflation. "Americans are anxious," Biden wrote. "I know that feeling. I grew up in a family where it mattered when the price of gas or groceries rose. We felt it around the kitchen table. But the American people should have confidence that our economy face."

This is all part of a broader monthlong push by Biden and his team on the economy and inflation, as CNN's Kaitlan Collins and Kevin Liptak reported Tuesday. The duo wrote:

"It's not the first time President Joe Biden and his aides have sought to renew attention on the economy. But there remains little Biden can do on his own to bring down prices in the immediate term.
"Yet facing near-record low approval ratings five months before the critical congressional contests, the President has determined another concentrated focus on Americans' bottom line is necessary to demonstrate his attention on the issue."

The Gallup numbers make clear the depth of the challenge before Biden. And time is decidedly limited, with just 160 days before Election Day 2022. Unless Biden can turn around perceptions on the condition of the economy -- and fast -- it is going to be a brutal November for his party.

The good, the bad and the ugly of Biden’s inflation plan

Inflation, at this point, is a problem without a presidential fix. But it is also the issue at the forefront of voters’ minds, so no president can get away with shrugging it off by declaring it “not my problem!”

This is the fundamental problem facing President Biden. Most voters do not care that inflation is an international problem, not just one afflicting the United States. Likewise, they will not grasp that the alternative to an aggressive fiscal stimulus plan during the pandemic was a sustained recession and high unemployment.

So how has Team Biden been handling this knotty economic and political challenge? With a combination of the good, the bad and the ugly.

Let’s start with the good. Biden is now regularly reminding voters that he is focused on inflation. He wrote a cogent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to remind voters that he understands their financial pain and assured them that he is doing whatever he can to solve it. He also met with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Tuesday, followed by a news briefing with Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council. By putting Powell front and center and telling voters that “the Federal Reserve has a primary responsibility to control inflation,” Biden is reminding informed voters that it is the Fed’s job to reach a 2 percent inflation rate.

lso in the positive column are Biden’s efforts to stress cost-containment strategies for consumers, such as his administration’s historic release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and attempts to cajole ports and retailers into fixing supply chains. Should the China competitiveness bill finally make its way through Congress, Biden will be able to stress the advantage of domestic chip production as well.

But all is not rosy. In the “bad” category is the administration’s repeated reference to deficit-cutting as an inflation-fighting tool. As The New York Times reported, “Deficits, which are financed by government borrowing, are not inherently inflationary: Whether they push up prices hinges on the economic environment as well as the nature of the spending or cutback in revenue that created the budget shortfall.”

And while deficit reduction might make long-term policy sense (requiring significant tax increases and entitlement reform), it’s far from clear this is a political winner. If the point is to stress to voters that the government won’t repeat its gigantic fiscal stimulus (thereby not boosting aggregate demand), Biden should say so. (He might also be raising deficit reduction as a sop to West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator who still has not come around on a vastly reduced Build Back Better plan.)

The “ugly” has not yet occurred, but it is likely coming. Biden’s proposal to forgive student debt, possibly for people with incomes as high as $150,000 ($300,000 for a couple), would be utterly off-message. It would undercut the notion that Biden is exercising fiscal restraint and would represent a reverse Robin Hood scheme wherein poorer taxpayers, the majority of whom lack a college education, subsidize richer, college-educated Americans.

Respected economists across the political spectrum have reiterated that this would be bad policy and unpopular. Jason Furman, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama, told Newsweek: “The perpetual deferral of interest on student loans is just about the worst policy. It is costly, unjustified, and has added to inflation. Some targeted forgiveness of student loans while resuming interest payments for everyone else would be a less bad policy that would at least help ensure that the biggest beneficiaries of college and graduate school are paying the cost of the likely very beneficial investment they made in higher education.”

Inflation is a no-win problem for Biden. He’s not going to convince many voters that the economy would be much worse if he had not championed the American Rescue Plan, nor will he convince many voters that inflation is largely the fault of the Fed’s miscalculation. The best he can probably do is keep up his “I care" message, highlight the good jobs numbers, root for the China competitiveness bill, avoid an egregious misstep on student loan forgiveness — and pray Manchin finally agrees to something that would help bring down energy and prescription drug costs.