The liar in chief.

'Kamala Harris Attempts to Lie Her Way into the Presidency'
<https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2024/09/26/breitbart-business-digest-kamala-harris-attempts-to-lie-her-way-into-the-presidency/>

'Harris Is Playing an Old Familiar Tune

Four years ago, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris
took control of the White House by campaigning on lies about the state
of the economy under Donald Trump.

We had just been through one of the sharpest economic slumps in U.S.
history, largely due to the pandemic lockdowns. But by the fall of 2020,
the economy was recovering rapidly. After plunging in the second quarter
of 2020, growth rebounded far better than almost anyone had predicted,
with the economy expanding at an annual rate of 33.4 percent.

That was the fastest growth by a wide margin in data going back to 1947.
Although establishment economists and pundits mocked the prediction of a
“V-Shaped” recovery by Larry Kudlow, Trump’s chief economic adviser,
that’s exactly what unfolded. In the final quarter of the year, the
economy continued to expand rapidly, growing at an annual rate of 4.3
percent.

Not only was the U.S. economy recovering, our recovery was stronger than
that of other developed countries that had also dealt with the pandemic
and lockdowns. The emergency economic programs put in place by the Trump
administration, with bipartisan support in Congress, were wildly
successful.

Yet Biden and Harris persisted in making the demonstrably false claim
that the economy was in ruins and that what they claimed was Trump’s
mismanagement of the pandemic was responsible. They never really got
around to explaining what they would have done differently—except
sometimes to hint that they thought Trump should have imposed stricter
lockdowns and longer restrictions on economic activity—much less how the
economy might have fared better.

This created a dilemma for Biden and Harris when they arrived in the
White House. Allowing the economy to continue to recover under
normalized fiscal policies would have amounted to an admission that they
had deceived the public about the state of the economy. What’s more, the
Democrat leadership had constituencies and agendas to pursue, and the
crisis appeared to provide an historic opportunity for a huge expansion
of government.

So, Biden and Harris let loose the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan
almost as soon as they set foot in the Oval Office. They had planned to
follow this up with trillions of dollars of more spending but were
stymied as the reality of escalating deficits and inflation amid
economic growth and falling unemployment set in.

Harris in Pittsburgh: Relentless Repeating Lies
It should not come as a surprise, then, that Harris is attempting to run
the same playbook against Trump this year. In a speech this week at the
Economic Club of Pittsburgh, Harris once again attempted to savage the
economic record of Donald Trump and promote the Biden-Harris
policies—little changed in substance but now rebranded as her own broad
economic vision—as a pragmatic, pro-business program that would revive
America’s industrial might.

“From our earliest days, America’s economic strength has been tied to
our industrial strength,” Harris said in what was billed as a major
economics campaign speech on Wednesday. “The same is true today. So I
will recommit the nation to global leadership in the sectors that will
define the next century.”

The problem for Harris is that this is much less plausible in 2024 than
it was four years ago. For one thing, we now have a record of the
economy created by the Democrats’ policies. Inflation rising to the
highest level in four decades and then persisting at elevated levels for
years will be the hallmark of the administration. But we can add to that
the striking failure of the Biden-Harris version of industrial policy to
achieve any visible success.

Harris has frequently claimed that the economy added 800,000
manufacturing jobs since Biden became president. But that’s a
sleight-of-hand. In fact, manufacturing employment is up just 147,000
from where it was before the pandemic. Over the past two years,
manufacturing employment has been essentially stagnant, despite billions
of subsidies poured into the sector by the Biden-Harris administration
through the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act. Real average
weekly wages for manufacturing workers have fallen 2.7 percent since
Biden and Harris took office.

And things are getting worse. Over the last three months, manufacturing
has contracted by 36,000 jobs. The Federal Reserve’s recent decision to
cut interest rates by 50 basis points was driven, in part, by fear that
the labor market would continue to soften—especially for factory
workers.

It’s no mystery why manufacturing employment has been stagnant and is
now falling. The Institute for Supply Management’s purchasing managers
index indicates that the sector has been in continuous contraction for
two years. Over the past two years, core capital goods orders have not
grown at all. The August 2024 figure reported on Thursday is actually
slightly below the August 2022 figure. Compared with the first eight
months of last year, core goods orders are up by a slight 0.3 percent.
Year-to-date, overall durable goods orders are down 1.3 percent compared
with last year.

Harris has also returned to the habit of lying about the Trump economy.
She claimed in her interview with MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle that
manufacturing jobs had declined by 200,000 under Trump even before the
pandemic, repeating a falsehood from her Pittsburgh speech. In fact,
factory jobs were up by 414,000 before the pandemic. And even if we
include the pandemic, the total decline under Trump never amounted to
200,000.

Another favorite Harris lie involves a report from Goldman Sachs that
found growth would be slightly lower in a Trump administration than a
Harris administration, largely because tighter border security would
restrict population growth. In Harris’ telling at the Pittsburgh speech,
this became a forecast that the economy would shrink under Trump and
enter a recession. She liked that lie so much that she also repeated it
in the MSNBC interview.

Will Harris be able to lie her way into the White House a second time?
Harris and Biden are presiding over an economy that, despite low
unemployment, is regarded as rotten to most Americans. And most
Americans now look back warmly on the prosperity of the Trump years. So,
perhaps this time around deceit will not pave the path to power'