CNN host Jake Tapper suggested Thursday that the White House might seem in “denial and out of touch” with Americans regarding the state of the economy.
Tapper pressed senior adviser to President Joe Biden, Gene Sperling, on the president denying the nation is in a recession. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released a report Thursday finding the GDP declined by 0.9% in the second consecutive quarter of 2022.
Economist Julius Shiskin declared in 1974 that a negative GDP in two consecutive quarters defines a recession. Although this definition is traditionally used, it is not the official indication that a country is in a recession.
“Doesn’t this semantic debate risk making the White House seem as if you’re in denial and out of touch with Americans who are really struggling out there?” Tapper asked.
“Not at all, Jake,” Sperling said. “Let’s acknowledge that every single family is the world’s leading expert on how they themselves are doing, and we totally appreciate the degree that so many Americans feel pinched and squeezed by the higher prices at the gas pump — even with gas prices down $0.75 now — squeezed at the grocery line by the impacts of global inflation on the U.S. We feel that, we’re not denying that.”
The adviser argued the country witnessed historic job growth in 2021 and touted the 2.7 million jobs and 3% growth in the private sector within the first half of 2022, which he claimed is inconsistent with the “historical definition” of a recession.
“But it’s been two quarters in a row of negative GDP growth,” Tapper said. “That is an ugly fact, and traditionally that has been the colloquial way a recession has been defined.”
“I’m just reminding people that those six months, that people would claim were in recession, are the same six months that we grew 2.7 million jobs and that only last year have we ever had that many, and the second closest was 1946, right after World War II.”
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