As we enter a new year with the hope that accompanies each annual change in the calendar, one question remains unanswered: Who is in charge in Washington?
Has there ever been a more disastrous first year in modern presidential history? On Joe Biden’s first day in office, there was a wave of executive orders despite his pre-election promise to limit such executive orders.
The closure of the Keystone pipeline on day one immediately laid off over a thousand well-paid unionized American workers and angered our Canadian allies. Not to mention adding to what would become much higher fuel costs for all of us.
Then a shocking and sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan without any apparent forethought and / or intelligent military contribution. Thirteen Americans died because of his bad plan, dead needlessly. More than in the entire last year of the previous administration. Think how this action appears to our enemies, or worse, to our allies? We are now seen as weak, or at best, confused. Putin won’t worry about Biden when he invades Ukraine. Likewise, Red China and their plans for Taiwan.
In every Democratic debate, then-candidate Biden and Harris pledged free health care for all illegals and yet acted with surprise when thousands and thousands of people appeared at our southern border. But to his credit, he delegated the border issue to our vice-president. Now Harris has been sent to investigate the matter and has visited Central America once and no government has heard from her since. By the way, remember how much she praised Biden in the Democratic primary?
As for the southern border, in his first 11 months, Biden will have voluntarily allowed 2 million people to cross our open border. Two million. It’s like adding the entire populations of Wyoming, Vermont, and North Dakota in just 11 months. Think for a moment about the impact this has on our hospitals, schools, social service agencies, courts, etc. We must also ask the obvious COVID question, how many of these 2 million have been vaccinated? Any? Some? More?
Let’s continue with COVID.
Despite then-candidate Biden’s promise that he had a plan that would treat the virus as a national problem, it is now clear that his plan was a failure. Pushing testing when supplies are almost non-existent is a no-starter, especially when we now find out that he missed the opportunity to order millions of these test units months ago. All this has accomplished is close to the panic of desperate Americans standing in long lines. Last week he realized his national plan was a failure. Seriously, 11 months later, you have to ask “who’s in charge?” Or, more importantly, “Does he have an idea?” “
We’ll leave inflation for another letter.
Brian Daly is a resident of Frederick County.
