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I would like to respond to the letter to the editor from Craig Grant published in this paper on June 1.
Mr. Grant’s disagreements with the Biden administration focuses on the economy, immigration, response to the COVID pandemic and attack on the First and Second Amendments to the Constitution. In response, I would like to make the following points.
The world economy, not just the U.S. economy, is experiencing the aftershocks of two years of disruptions caused by the pandemic. The same pattern happened in 1920 after the pandemic of 1918. History repeats itself. President Biden has made fighting inflation his top priority and has pledged not to interfere with the monetary policies Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is putting in place to fight inflation. After successfully fighting the 1920 downturn, the American economy grew 42% over the next decade. Hopefully, history will repeat itself. Additionally, the American economy created 428,000 jobs in April and currently has an unemployment rate of 3.6%. This isn’t the rampant unemployment Mr. Grant describes.
The claim that the president “encouraged and enable millions of uninoculated illegal immigrants to flood across our borders” is false. Congress needs to pass immigration reform legislation or else the pressure on our borders will continue.
President Biden’s response to the pandemic has been to trust public health authorities to recommend the appropriate response to protect the lives of American citizens. Mr. Grant’s attack is more appropriately placed on the pandemic itself rather than those policies put in place to fight it.
Mr. Grant equates our support of Ukraine with, “destroying Americans’ Second Amendment right to protect ourselves with firearms.” To the contrary, our support for the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion is directly related to the freedoms we enjoy in Western democracies. A successful repulsion of the armed invasion will ensure the preservation of the freedoms we enjoy.
John Labaj
Crystal Lake