It’s newsworthy but also an item that Joe Biden’s staff would prefer to remain hidden. After a string of failures, the Biden White House did something well but didn’t solve anything.
I’m talking about the rail strike that was averted yesterday. Biden waltzed out there, took to the podium, and declared victory for American families and the country. Biden said this was a win for America—while also clamoring about falling domestic prices, which does not comport with the recent consumer price index report that crashed the markets this week. About $1.5 trillion evaporated into the ether, thanks to Biden’s economic policies, but is the new agreement between the railway companies and the unions the accomplishment?
No, it’s that Biden and his team, mostly his staff, kept this crisis a secret until we were approaching impact winter.
The Biden White House dithered all spring and summer trying to come to an arrangement that satisfied big labor on the railways. The pay raises or pension allocation wasn’t even the core of the dispute. It was over missed work penalties and sick leave. Ten unions signed off on the agreement, but two were holdouts. These two unions, which happen to be the largest and most powerful, represent the conductors and engineers—and they vowed to strike unless there was contractual clarification about the penalties mentioned above. The ten other unions said they would strike out of solidarity, priming the nation for a brutal economic shock that would terminate virtually all commuter-based traffic and result in a daily cost of $2 billion. Thirty percent of rail freight would be left stranded, making things worse for those in agriculture who need essential materials for harvest time.
You can see why Biden’s team kept this a secret when there was little to no movement in moving the needle on negotiations. It proved to be another political headache for Democrats, who would be forced to consider Congress imposing a contract to end the dispute, which undoubtedly would anger one of the last legacy blocs of the Democratic Party base. With the 2022 midterms looking grim for Democrats, given the economic recession and Biden’s mid-30 approval numbers, a rail strike landing at the feet of the Democratic Party was the last thing that needed to happen to the Biden White House. This agreement went beyond must-pass territory.
Yet, the months of haggling were not lost on Republicans, with Senator Mitch McConnell taking a swipe at Biden, who has long boasted about his labor union ties. That would have been the coup de grace for this president, who openly declared war on half the country for merely disagreeing with him on September 3. Mr. Unity thinks all Republicans are domestic terrorists. Now, Biden—a supposed champion of the working class—seemed destined to own a devastating rail strike.
It’s part of a string of crises that the Biden administration has grossly underestimated its abilities to solve. The Biden White House has yet to solve any domestic issues crossing its desk. We’re still engulfed in high inflation, the recession is already here, and the jobs numbers are mixed. No, people returning to their former pre-COVID positions of employment are not signs of job creation.
So, all that’s left is the Biden White House’s ability to keep all of this—the economic fallout from such a labor strike—under wraps until we learned this week that if negotiations failed, Armageddon would be upon us. The Biden team kept a secret, but that didn’t help ameliorate this crisis between the two sides. Even then, this is far from over, as the rank-and-file must vote to ratify the new agreement, which will take weeks. By the end of the year, we could again be looking down the barrel of a destructive rail strike.
In the meantime, the only accomplishment of the Biden White House as of late is keeping this strike a secret, and even still, it’s insignificant, a word that fits this White House like a glove. You can also add the comments incompetent, tone deaf, and torpid to its ongoing list of descriptors.
