To hear Joe Biden tell it, Bidenomics is about “growing an economy from the middle out and bottom up, instead of the top down.” But that description couldn’t be further from the truth.

At its core, Bidenomics is about government command and control of the economy – more government spending and borrowing, more costly government regulations, government picking winners and losers, and higher taxes to feed the federal behemoth.

As for the President’s claim that Bidenomics is “bottom up, instead of top down,” the U.S. government is the wealthiest, most powerful institution in the entire world. Anything that comes from the U.S. government is, by definition, “top down.”  To pretend that the President and the U.S. government are somehow “the bottom” is silly.

The Bidenomics legislation enacted by the President – the so-called “Covid relief” bill , the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act – have one thing in common: more government control.

The Covid bill injected $1.9 trillion (of borrowed money) into the economy to fight a pandemic that was nearing its end. State and local governments and households were awash in cash – and spent it. All the bill did was help trigger inflation.

The CHIPS Act will use lavish taxpayer subsidies to lure computer chip production to the U.S. The Biden Administration will also use the program to push a progressive agenda buy requiring companies looking for a subsidy to abide by a set of priorities as long as your arm. 

If you want a subsidy, you’ll have to sign on to the entire progressive agenda: DEI, labor unions, prevailing wages, project labor agreements, free childcare, and more. This is industrial policy by executive fiat, where the goal isn’t to get more for the taxpayer’s dollar, but to use the taxpayer’s dollar to force progressive social change and guarantee high profits to the companies that support Biden.  

Then there’s the green energy provisions of the IRA that seek to force Americans into electric vehicles that they clearly do not want (Hertz is offloading a third of its EV fleet because customers don’t want them). Let individual Americans, not the government, decide what kind of car they want to drive.

Bidenomics even wants to force you to work not how you want to work, but how Joe Biden and his progressive allies in the labor movement want you to work. The Department of Labor’s rule on independent contractors and the National Labor Relations Board’s rule on franchise workers will both make it harder for millions of Americans to earn a living. Neither rule is designed to help workers; both are designed to help unions – a top Biden political ally.  

Biden and his allies in Congress ushered in 5.5 trillion in new spending, handouts to the well-connected and political allies, and overburdensome regulations. And we’re all paying for it – literally. It costs the average American household $11,400 more every year just to maintain the lifestyle they had when Joe Biden took office. It’s time to hold Biden and the Bidenomics enablers in Congress accountable.