Imagine you're Joe Biden, and you're required to give a State of the Union address because it's in the Constitution. So if you're Biden, it would take a lot of brass to stand up on live television and claim the U.S. is better off than it was when you took over. Could you do that? Well, in a little more than an hour, Joe Biden will do that.
If only it were true. It's not true. This country is more divided, less self-confident, more confused and sadder than it's been in living memory. For the first time in generations, we face the actual risk of a world war. Our problems are fixable, but they are profound, and they require the full attention of wise and serious leaders who love the country and who are willing to think beyond the next election. Instead, unfortunately, we've got Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and the cast of mediocrities who stand behind them making the actual decisions
So if we had to guess, we would guess that Biden is going to use his speech tonight as yet other another opportunity to brag about his victories and blame his failures on others. January 6, Vladimir Putin. We don't expect a single honest word. We hope we're surprised, but we don't expect to be. In the meantime, here's as close to we can get as this statistical analysis of the actual state of the union under Joe Biden.
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Since his predecessor, Donald Trump, gave his final address to the joint session of the Congress, the cost of food staples in the United States – a pretty good measure – has risen by more than 20%. The price of gasoline has gone up by more than 40 and diesel even higher. Consumer confidence, meanwhile, is the mirror image, has dropped by 40%. What's risen is credit card debt. That's now at an all-time high, over $1T cumulatively, it is estimated.
And homelessness as well. There are now tens of thousands more Americans living on the streets than there were when Joe Biden became president. He'll ignore that fact tonight, guaranteed. What could he say about it?
On the other hand, how could he ignore it? But again, he will. Interest rates, meanwhile, have skyrocketed. The number of new home buyers is lower than it's been in any point in modern history. The number of working age American men who are actually working is now under 68%. Take a look at the graph on your screen. If anything is an emergency, that's an emergency, but it's being ignored.
"We'll just import new workers." And that's why the southern border of the United States is open tonight, as it has been for two years. And because it's open, millions and millions and millions of foreign nationals have streamed across into our country illegally. In many cases, we know nothing about them at all. We can't even imagine how their presence long-term will affect our economy or already strained social services, the ones you paid for your entire life. You think health care is in shambles now? Go ahead and visit an emergency room in five years. Good luck getting treatment.
But the real cost to the country isn't social cohesion. This is just too many new people. Doesn't matter whether they're good people or bad people, they're strangers. And there are too many of them. There is no chance we could assimilate all of them. And at this pointy, we have enough problems with our social fabric all on our own. Here's one measure. In March of 2020, 31% of Americans told Gallup that they, quote, "worried a great deal" about race. When Joe Biden took office, that number went up to nearly 50%. And, of course, it's all the administration talks about: race. Race is not a solvable condition. It's genetic. It never changes. So if you focus on it, ultimately, you'll make people hate each other. And that's what's happening.
That might make you anxious about the future. But of course, our future is education. All of us have heard that since birth in this country. So how are our schools doing under Joe Biden? Well, here's one measure. The national average ACT score in 2022 hit its lowest level in more than three decades. SAT scores have gone down too. Now, just over 40% of all test takers meet or exceed standards in reading, writing and math. Test results in certain cities are even worse. In Baltimore, for example, at least 23 schools have not a single student, not one student in the whole school, proficient in math.
So how is the Biden administration responding to this? Are there alarms going off in the Education Department? No. Schools are just failing to measure the failure. They're getting rid of standardized tests up and down the chain, including Harvard, which just made them optional. The American Bar Association says law students don't even need to take the LSAT anymore because tests are racist. So there's a lot of expressed concern about racial justice and equity. Has that helped people? Well, it's made a few people very rich. The ladies who run Black Lives Matter have a lot of houses. But how are ordinary people doing? Are they better off for all of it? No.
Life expectancy in the United States has continued to decline. For all races, Black and White Americans. It's now at its lowest level, life expectancy, in over 25 years. Now, that's not just due to COVID. Those numbers have been declining every year for the past four years. Suicides up roughly 5% that we know of. Overdose deaths up more than 50% since before the pandemic. Alcohol deaths up more than 30%.
Now, these aren't so much medical problems as they are famously deaths of despair. And what's jarring is that there doesn't seem to be an option for many Americans. A lot of people in this country don't think they can be saved. Church membership has just dropped below 50% for the first time ever in the history of this country. So it's a sad secular country with decreasing reservoirs of hope and military enlistment is a pretty good measure of how people feel about that. The Pentagon has fallen short of its enlistment targets by 25%. That's more than 15,000 recruits.
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So what's growing and thriving in this country under Joe Biden? Well, weed dispensaries are. They're popping up everywhere. And the Biden administration is encouraging this. That's the Biden economy. Weed dispensaries backed by private equity. Cannabis sales have exploded in this country, going from $12 billion to more than $30 billion a year. So we're building back better. We're building a lot of weed dispensaries. It's not exactly what we were promised.
We'll stop the analysis there, but you get the point. The question is, what will Biden say about all of this? Now, an honest man who cared about the country would identify the problems honestly so we could solve them. Take responsibility for some, shift the blame on others. That's okay. But tell us the truth.
If people are dying younger, killing themselves, living on the street, if credit card debt is at an all-time high, you can't tell us the State of the Union is strong. And if you can't tell us that, then we can't fix it.
