Top Twitter user Ron Klain is at it again. This time, the terminally online White House chief of staff tweeted out a list of talking points to bring up when your Uncle goes after Joe Biden at Thanksgiving dinner. Putting aside the fact that uncle should only be capitalized when it is being used as a proper noun, Cockburn is stunned at the daftness of the compilation.
One last item for your Thanksgiving dinner: some talking points when "that Uncle" comes "at you" about @POTUS. pic.twitter.com/P9X0wDRRZK
— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) November 23, 2022
Klain claims that “gas prices are down by $1.35/gallon since June and inflation is moderating”, which while technically true, requires you to ignore the fact that gas prices were over $4.90/gallon in June.
He uses the same laughable logic regarding inflation: it has “moderated” from a multiple-decade’s high of 9.1 percent in June to a still painful 7.7 percent. Cockburn also wonders if inflation would be so high if Biden had not unnecessarily spent trillions of dollars upon entering office. As the Twitter fact-checkers would say, where is the context?!
And what of Klain’s assertion that the administration has cut hearing aid costs? That is true, and Biden should be lauded for pushing the FDA to deregulate the products, but it would be nice if the administration would apply the same deregulatory logic to other areas of the American economy. Cockburn has a bright idea: maybe deregulating healthcare more broadly would lower healthcare costs! Unfortunately, the administration is unable to see the contradiction, because Klain also touts the administration’s heavy-handed healthcare regulation, namely price caps and fumbling with Obamacare — which, over a decade on, has done little to tackle costs more broadly.
Cockburn must also point out a particularly egregious typo. In a subsection dedicated to economic issues, Klain writes: “And NO taxes on people making above $400k — he kept his promise”. Of course, Biden did not promise this, he promised no new taxes for those making below $400k, but that is just an honest mistake on Klain’s part. Nonetheless, there is still a grain of truth in Klain’s original statement. Inflation disproportionately harms those with lower incomes, and in that sense functions like an unseen tax, but those with higher incomes do not have to worry as much about, for example, the massive rise in food prices.
So, in a sense, Biden’s spending binge raised taxes significantly on the poor and only moderately on the wealthy. Maybe a Freudian slip on Klain’s part?
