While the Biden administration continues to insist that an economy showing two consecutive quarters of negative growth is not in a recession, one of his predecessors from the same office disagrees.
Speaking at a summit with incoming President George W. Bush, outgoing President Bill Clinton told reporters that he believed the American economy would avoid falling into recession territory because a recession requires two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. That’s the most popularly held definition. Officially, the National Bureau of Economic Research makes rulings on the state of the economy.
The social media accounts for the Republican National Committee’s War Room used the clip to argue that the Biden administration is wrong when it says that the nation is not experiencing a recession.
“There’s going to be a lot of chatter today on Wall Street and among pundits about whether we are in a recession,” Biden said Thursday. “But if you look at our job market, consumer spending, business investment, we see signs of economic progress in the second quarter, as well.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen stuck to similar talking points and told one reporter that discussion on the matter would be purely semantic and unhelpful.
Still, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, underscoring the recent disappointing economic performance over the past year, reported that the gross domestic product of the United States shrank by 0.9% in the latest quarter. This decrease follows the previous quarter’s 1.6% decline. That’s two consecutive quarters of a receding economy paired with the highest rate of inflation seen in 40 years.
