ANDY PUZDER: Inflation is rising…credit card debt exceeds $1 TRILLION…and Americans are exhausting 401(K)s to make ends meet…Yet Joe dare to take our thanks for ‘Bidenomics’? His fiscal madness has plunged us into this crisis

Andy Puzder is the former CEO of CKE Restaurants and a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and Pepperdine University

Listening to the Biden White House talk about economic issues is always a surreal experience.

It is reminiscent of Charles Dickens’ famous line: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’

They can’t keep it straight.

While President Biden claims that “Bidenomics works,” his Vice President Kamala Harris laments that “most Americans are an unexpected $400 expense away from bankruptcy.”

So what is it?

Here’s a clue.

New figures released Thursday morning showed inflation rose to 3.2 percent in July from 3 percent in June, despite a 12-month streak of declining consumer price increases.

And now alone 46 percent of Americans say they can cover an unexpected $400 bill without going into debt.

That does not mean that a the majority live paycheck to paycheck.

For the first time in US history, credit card debt exceeds $1 trillion.

And in the second quarter of 2023, 36 percent more people drained their retirement accounts to make ends meet, compared to the same period last year, according to the Bank of America analysis of its clients’ employee benefits programs.

So, clearly, not the best of times.

The broader economic picture is also much less sunny than Biden would have us believe.

The credit rating agency Fitch recently downgraded its rating for US debt from a top-notch AAA score to AA+ because it expects a ‘fiscal deterioration in the next three years’.

Fitch expects “tighter credit conditions, weaker business investment and a slowdown in consumption” to push the US economy into a “recession” by the end of this year or early 2024.

That doesn’t really sound like the best time either.

Even Steve Schwarzman, CEO of the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, Inc., admitted that “the numbers sadly justify (the downgrade).”

Is it any surprise that the American people have taken notice?

Only 37 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s approach to the economy in the latest CNN poll. Two-thirds of Biden’s 2020 voters polled by Reuters/Ipsos said the economy was “worse” or “about the same” as it was in 2020 during the pandemic — under President Trump.

The huge gulf between how Biden views his economic prowess and how Americans feel is confusing — until one remembers that this president has a nasty habit of denying reality.

Recall that the White House once assured the country that rising inflation was either “highly unlikely,” “transient,” “temporary,” slowing and/or peaking, as it climbed to 9.1 percent in June 2022.

With inflation growth finally ebbing from its peaks, as would inevitably happen after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, Biden is demanding credit. But that’s like an arsonist bowing after the fire department arrives to put out the fire he started.

Inflation peaked in March 2021 when “Bidenomics” donated $1.9 trillion in completely unnecessary “pandemic relief” spending – for a COVID crisis that had effectively ended – to a US economy already recovering.

As a result, inflation exploded and the country is now hurtling through the charred ruins.

Biden expects us to thank him for it. No, we’re not stupid.

Every month, the Bureau of Labor Statistic publishes the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a commonly used measure of inflation. CPI takes a basket of commonly purchased goods and services and prices it monthly.

In January 2021, when Biden took office, that basket cost about $261.50. In July of this year, the same basket cost $305.70. That’s a massive 16.9 percent increase in just two and a half years.

It is also larger than the CPI increase for a full four-year presidential term since the 1980s.

The wages of working-class Americans have not kept pace with these rising costs. And it’s not just the poor who suffer from Bidenomics.

Fifty-three percent of those who earn between $50,000 and $100,000 a year live by word of mouth.

All the money that comes in just flies out again to cover the monthly bills and expenses, which means eggs are cracked open and debts pile up.

When Biden took office, Americans had $2.3 trillion in personal savings. That number skyrocketed to $5.7 trillion after Biden’s so-called “American Rescue Plan.”

Today, the savings sit around the greatly reduced $862 billion. The average middle-class household has lost more than $33,000 in real wealth in the past year an analysis.

So no. Bidenomics doesn’t work, and everyone knows that.

Americans are draining their savings, maxing out credit cards and putting their retirement lives at risk.

In that sense, Biden does deserve credit — though he goes to great lengths to avoid it.