Detroit News op-ed: Biden’s Year of Broken Promises

One year ago, I sat on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol and listened to President Joe Biden's first inaugural address. As he assumed office, the president pledged to be a unifying voice and help the country rebuild from the pandemic.

A year later, by every measure, Biden has broken these central promises. He's divided us at every turn, hasn't shut the virus down and made life more expensive for the American people.

Over the past 12 months, we have witnessed one discouraging inflation and jobs report after another. The most recent jobs data from December was a new low of the Biden presidency, falling well below the growth economists projected. Instead of a booming recovery, our nation is 4 million jobs short of the pre-pandemic high in 2019.

Coupled with inflation at a 40-year high, hardworking Americans are feeling the pinch as they work to stretch their dollars. According to a recent survey, the vast majority of workers said wages are not keeping pace with soaring day-to-day expenses.

Families are paying more every trip to the grocery store, and supply chain woes are leaving many shelves bare. In 2021, the average household spent $3,500 more to buy the same products as they did in recent years, found an analysis by a group at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

Meanwhile, two years into the pandemic, and $5 trillion later, most Americans still struggle to find COVID-19 tests. Schools are still shutting down in parts of the country.

The Biden administration is still relying on draconian mandates and one-size-fits-all approaches, too often grounding its decision-making in political science rather than hard science. As a result of Operation Warp Speed, the Biden administration inherited three vaccines, yet still managed to be caught flat-footed time and time again.

President Biden took a border secured under the Trump administration and created a full-blown crisis. Since the president took office, more than 1.7 million illegal immigrants have been apprehended at the southern border. The number of illegal crossings has risen at a faster rate under Biden than at any time in recent history.

In addition, Biden's lax border policies have led to illicit drugs pouring into our country. In 2021, more counterfeit pills were seized at the border than the previous two years combined.

Just as the president's domestic policy has failed, so has his foreign policy. While Biden has been adversarial to domestic energy by shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline and other production, he has essentially greenlit the Nord Stream 2 pipeline for Russia, giving the Kremlin a major geopolitical victory and economic boon.

Ominously, our adversaries witnessed Biden's utter debacle in Afghanistan that left Americans stranded and the Taliban in power. Vladimir Putin has seized on America's weakness by building up troops on the Ukraine border and ignoring the unenforced cyber "red lines" drawn after actors in Russia launched a cyberattack on critical infrastructure — the Colonial Pipeline — in May 2021.

China is also emboldened by the White House's display of weakness. The Chinese Communist Party has gleefully rejoiced that Biden appears to have little interest in investigating the origins of COVID-19 or holding them accountable for their role in the global pandemic.

Our country cannot afford another year of incompetent leadership and partisan division. It is time for a new path forward.

We need to restore America's energy independence. We need to secure the border. We need to keep schools open and students in the classroom. We need to promote job growth and tackle the labor shortage. We need to take a flexible response with COVID and allow workers and our economy to flourish. And we need to project strength on the world stage in the face of growing threats.

President Biden has achieved one thing during his first year in office: providing zero evidence that he is up for the job.

U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, represents Michigan's 7th District in the House of Representatives. This op-ed originally appeared in the January 23 edition of the Detroit News.