Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday listed three of the Democrats’ major failures at the outset of former President Joe Biden’s term.
During an appearance on “The Bulwark,” Buttigieg said Democrats didn’t properly manage school closures during COVID, the southern border crisis, and inflation.
“One, for the love of God, figure out a way to get the schools open sooner. We got very knee-jerk about this, and the costs were not just politically, but, in a profound way, I think for the generation, the costs were profound,” Buttigieg told host Tim Miller when asked what Democrats should have done differently at the start of Biden’s term. “And I think anybody who was involved who was, by the way, obviously doing their best to deal with a crisis that killed a million Americans. But I think most people involved would like to be able to have found a way to safely get more schools open more quickly.”
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Buttigieg pivoted to immigration and said the border crisis was another issue that Democrats misjudged early on.
“Pay more attention to the border,” Buttigieg said. “And that’s going to be something that you can’t just take your time to deal with. These are all things, by the way, that are super, policy-wise and politically. We have the benefit of hindsight to point to a lot of this.”
On the economy, Buttigieg said Democrats mistakenly believed that job growth alone was enough to define success.
“Even though you spent your entire political lifetime believing that the economy and jobs are the same thing, and if you have lots of jobs, it’s a good economy. And if you have a problem with jobs, it’s a bad economy,” Buttigieg said. “Remember that prices are just as big a part of the economy, it just hasn’t come up much in the last 40 years. Those are some things I’d be whispering about.”
When asked what he would have done differently, Buttigieg said he would have addressed worries about inflation more seriously early on rather than wave them away as many did in the administration’s first years.
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“Look, no country was able to save their economy from COVID without getting into some inflation, some serious and painful inflation. But I do think that there were a lot of moments where people kind of waved it away in the first year or two, even just like the conversation about it, the focus,” Buttigieg said. “It is true that we had no choice but to bring back the economy by any means necessary. We forget how grave the threat of a depression was in 2020 or 2021. When I came in, I spent a big part of my time as secretary dealing with getting airlines to treat their passengers better.”
Biden’s economy wasn’t so great for American workers, with job growth falling short of expectations and inflation outpacing wages. Despite the repeated claims of economic strength, researchers told the Daily Caller News Foundation that record immigration and dwindling opportunities have left many Americans behind.
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Unemployment fell throughout most of President Donald Trump’s first term, excluding the COVID-19 crisis, but it began rising under Biden, increasing from 3.4% in January 2023 to 4.2% by November 2024. Although the Biden-Harris administration claims to have added nearly 16 million jobs, that figure largely reflects Americans returning to positions that they had lost during the pandemic.
The Biden-Harris administration also oversaw the largest net migration in U.S. history, driven largely by illegal immigration. Pew Research estimates the unauthorized immigrant population reached 11 million in 2022, with the Center for Migration Studies reporting that 8.3 million undocumented immigrants now make up roughly 5.2% of the U.S. workforce.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
