This week, CBP and BLS will offer new data that will likely strengthen arguments against Biden’s immigration and economic policies.
This is a big week for the Biden administration. Tomorrow, the Customs and Border Protection will update the agency’s official data on April 2021 border enforcement actions. We don’t know what they will be, but CNN reported May 3, “throughout April, Customs and Border Protection has encountered an average of just under 6,000 people daily at the southern border, according to a Department of Homeland Security official, which is in line with the March average of around 5,560 people daily… During the first three weeks of April, around 122,000 people were encountered by US border authorities on the southwest border, another signal that the month will likely be similar to March, according to preliminary data obtained by CNN.”
On Wednesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will update the numbers on the Consumer Price Index; last month, the CPI had the biggest jump in almost a decade, an ominous indicator that serious inflation could be returning to American economic life. As our Andrew Stuttaford wrote a few days ago, “there is a very good chance that people and markets will not be inclined to believe that the jump in inflation is temporary and will adjust their behavior accordingly, turning the temporary into something more sustained.”
You may be noticing a pattern here:
- Biden and his team insist the surge at the border has nothing to do with his immigration enforcement policies.
- Biden and his team insist the lousy jobs numbers have nothing to do with more generous unemployment benefits extending to September.
- Biden and his team insist the surge in the consumer price index is not a sign that inflation is upon us, and that it has nothing to do with the $3.4 trillion in new federal spending since October 1.
Have you noticed this strange pattern Biden’s critics – not just Republican critics, but Democrats like Rep. Henry Cuellar, Steven Rattner and Larry Summers – warn that the Biden administration’s policy decisions will have some bad consequence, the critics get ignored, the bad consequence comes to pass, and then Biden and his team insist it’s just a coincidence?