The Biden-Harris administration’s economic cheerleading is a sideshow, distracting from the real numbers. The truth? The U.S. economy is slowing, and the job market isn’t nearly as strong as they’d like us to believe. Last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) revealed that the U.S. added 818,000 fewer jobs than reported over the previous year. Worse still, these cuts mostly hit high-paying jobs in professional and manufacturing sectors. Some “economic recovery,” right?

So, what went wrong? The BLS has been using questionable methods to estimate job numbers, especially when it comes to calculating how many businesses are opening or closing (the birth-death adjustment). These numbers have been artificially inflated since the COVID-19 lockdowns and the government’s wild spending spree. Let’s not forget the rampant fraud in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans—many fraudulent businesses popped up just to grab free money. Many of the “new jobs” counted since 2021 may be fiction. And even if the data is accurate, most of the job growth has gone to foreign-born workers. So much for supporting American jobs.

The economy is showing other signs of strain, too. Consumer spending is down, unemployment is inching up, and the yield curve is inverted, a classic sign of a coming recession. Even worse, much of the so-called post-COVID growth was driven by government spending. That spending will turn from an economic booster to a dead weight dragging us down.

And let’s not ignore this reckless spending spree. We’re not at war, and the economy isn’t officially in a recession. Still, the federal government is spending like there’s no tomorrow. In 2023, it spent $6.2 trillion while bringing in only $4.7 trillion in tax revenue. That’s a $1.5 trillion deficit. The national debt has now exploded past $35 trillion, and the U.S. government is shelling out over $1 trillion yearly in interest payments. This is an unsustainable spiral, and there’s no plan to stop it.

Debt has been a problem for decades, but it’s getting worse under Biden and Harris. Usually, this level of debt issuance would drain liquidity from private markets. Still, the Federal Reserve’s Overnight Reverse Repo (ON RRP) program has intervened. This facility started during the COVID stimulus to prevent negative interest rates and has been soaking up excess cash by offering a minimal interest rate—higher than anything else on the market.

Now, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been playing a dangerous game. Since 2023, she’s been issuing ultra-short-term debt to compete with the ON RRP, offering slightly higher interest rates to lure money out of that facility and into new short-term Treasuries. This scheme is a temporary band-aid to cover up the effects of government overspending until after the election. But it’s not a solution; it’s just delaying the problem. The ON RRP funds are running out, and the Treasury will need to raise more soon, ideally after the voters head to the polls.

The Treasury has openly admitted to drawing down the ON RRP, but they call it “supporting liquidity.” What they’re doing is setting up a crisis for the future. Issuing only short-term debt means constantly refinancing at potentially higher rates, a risky move that could cost taxpayers even more. Meanwhile, Yellen’s band-aid strategy kicks the can down the road, hoping to avoid a meltdown until after the election.

Instead of facing the problem head-on, the Biden administration chose short-term political gain over long-term stability, hoping the crisis doesn’t explode until after the votes are counted. It’s just another example of why all this talk about “preserving America’s institutions” is nonsense. The real goal is to protect the power of the ruling elite, which in today’s world is the Democratic Party. From the Fed to the Treasury, these institutions are manipulated to benefit the few at the expense of everyday Americans.

If Trump and Vance get into office, they’ll need to dig deep into the Fed’s role in all of this. The first order of business should be to rein in these out-of-control institutions and put America back on a path to fiscal sanity. The American people deserve better than this constant cycle of spending and deception.