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In recent years, as job growth has soared in the United States and the unemployment rate has dropped to levels unseen in more than 50 years, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have responded to the news by ignoring the data. Month after month, the economy adds hundreds of thousands of jobs, and I eagerly await the reactions from GOP congressional leaders.
Invariably, the party finds itself literally at a loss for words.
It was against this backdrop that the Commerce Department released new data roughly 24 hours ago, pointing to robust economic growth in the United States over the summer (July through September). In fact, the gross domestic product reached 4.9% for the quarter — a level of growth unseen during Donald Trump’s first three years in office — exceeding expectations.
It was, by any fair measure, "stellar" news, made better when combined with recent data pointing to low unemployment and inflation rates that are dropping.
Naturally, I was curious how Republicans would respond to the news. A few options came to mind.
Maybe leading GOP officials would make the case that the robust economic recovery is nice, but President Joe Biden doesn’t deserve any credit. Perhaps they’d argue that it’s too soon to applaud good news since there’s still plenty of economic work to do. Maybe they’d argue that the United States economy is a massive beast, and it’s unrealistic to think a White House agenda is uniquely responsible for periodic shifts.
But as it turns out, Republicans went with an entirely different approach: They simply ignored the good news, as if it didn’t happen.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t bother to issue any kind of statement, and new House Speaker Mike Johnson was similarly silent — except to tell Fox News’ Sean Hannity that he believes the U.S. economy “is in the tank,” overwhelming evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
The Republican National Committee sort of acknowledged the GDP report — it issued a statement arguing that “Bidenomics is a failure,” which appeared to be odds with the news Americans had just received — though it made no mention of the actual data.
There’s no great mystery here. Party leaders have almost certainly concluded that if they were to comment on the good news, more Americans might hear about it — and that’s the last thing the GOP wants. There’s political utility in simply looking the other way.
But the Republicans’ silence doesn’t change the fact that the latest economic data is fantastic.
This post updates our related earlier coverage.