Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg chose to try and dodge a series of questions levied against him concerning whether or not the U.S. was actually headed for a recession in its current climate.
While making various appearances across the Sunday talk shows, Buttigieg carefully wove his wave through interviews and deflected questions on numerous accounts when the various hosts questioned him about if he expected a recession to be on the horizon. The comments from the Transportation Secretary come to light directly on the heels of a pair of consecutive quarters sporting negative economic growth, which in itself already meets the standard rule-of-thumb for a recession, all going along with the rapidly increasing level of inflation going up 8.2% from September 2021 to September 2022 which zoomed past the forecasts from various analysts.
Despite all the evidence, Buttigieg chose to try and downplay the obvious threat of the country dropping into a recession while speaking on “This Week” from ABC.
“Look, it’s possible, but not inevitable,” he stated. “[P]art of why we do see a lot of pressure on prices is that while demand has come back, Americans have more income because Americans have jobs in this almost historically low level of unemployment, it’s been hard for the supply side to keep up,” he went on.
Then while speaking on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” he was pushed to clarify his directly conflicting statements about Old Uncle Joe from last week concerning possible recession. “What exactly is the forecast?” questioned Margaret Brennan, the show’s host.
“Well, look, I mean, forecasting is by its nature, something that is a little bit uncertain,” shot back Buttigieg.
“That’s political spin,” interrupted Brennan.
“Well, look, I- I don’t think anybody could argue that, for example, our unemployment numbers are anything but strong as hell, they’re under 4%,” answered Buttigieg. “That almost never happens. We’re at or near the definition of full employment. We also don’t have any illusions about the challenges that Americans face with prices,” he added before shifting the blame to Republicans who didn’t vote for Democratic priorities in the Inflation Reduction Act or the government funding bill.”
“We are squarely focused on making it easier for Americans to get by on their income,” stated Buttigieg.
The comments from Buttigieg come in the wake of once again conflicting statements issued by his boss. As part of a recent interview with Jake Tapper of CNN, Biden downplayed the country’s fears of recession, stating that if one does take place, it would only be a minor one.
“Every six months they say this,” expressed Biden. “There is no guarantee that there’s going to be a recession, I don’t think there will be a recession, if there is it will be a very slight recession, that is we’ll move down slightly.”
However, while speaking to the media on Saturday, Old Uncle Joe denied the possibility of a recession at all, making the claim that the U.S. economy was quite strong and that many other countries were dealing with hardships to an even worse degree.
“Our economy is strong as hell,” stated Biden. “Inflation is worldwide, it’s worse off everywhere else than it is in the United States. So the problem is a lack of economic growth and sound policy in other countries, not so much ours.”
