Reprinted from Common Dreams by Jake Johnson on December 19, 2020.
When President Donald Trump departs the White House next month, he will leave in his wake a nation devastated by a pandemic he failed to confront and an economic scene characterized by rising poverty, widespread hunger, a looming eviction tsunami, and mass layoffs that have left the US with fewer jobs than when his administration began.
And for that, a scathing new report (pdf) by Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee (JEC) argues, the outgoing president “only has himself to blame.”
Released Friday in response to the 2020 Economic Report of the President (pdf), the assessment of Trump’s economic performance during his four years in office runs directly counter to the rosy depiction frequently offered by the president himself, who seldom missed an opportunity to boast about the state of the stock market even in the midst of nationwide material suffering brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.
“American businesses and workers are struggling to survive because President Trump refused to listen to advice from public health experts and economists about the best way to handle the coronavirus,” Representative Don Beyer (D-Virginia), the incoming JEC chair, said in a statement. “In fact, his handling of the coronavirus will hurt the economy for years to come. That is President Trump’s economic legacy—one of the worst among all US presidents.” ..
