Kudlow: The Biden admin ought to be ashamed of itself

Please permit me to riff on two separate topics. First, there's a few odds and ends on the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court leak scandal. 

Chief Justice John Roberts called the leak of an Alito opinion draft absolutely appalling and then said if the person behind it thinks it will affect our work, that's just foolish. Good for John Roberts and on a related point, it is absolutely appalling that Madam Psaki continues to refuse to condemn the leak of the Supreme's draft opinion. 

Just imagine if Donald Trump or some senior official in his administration leaked a controversial memo on almost any subject. You would think Madam Psaki and the progressive Democrats would scream, yelp, jump up and down, call for immediate impeachment. Bet they would.  

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In fact, didn't they kind of do this, with the whole phony Russian collusion argument that has now been discredited? Trump didn't even leak that, it was leaked against him. 

And yet on another related point, you have this crazy group called Ruth Sent Us, and they published the home addresses of not only Chief Justice Roberts, but Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. In other words, unleashing a war against the Supreme Court. 

Maybe not surprising, because the far Left wanted to defund the police. Now they want to defund the Supremes — maybe even destroy the Supremes. So, after calling Trump Republicans "extremists" and watching these progressive activists planning protests and threatening the justices at their homes, Madam Psaki defends it as nothing more than a "peaceful protest." That's all, peaceful protests, just like the Black Lives Matter peaceful protests of a couple of summers ago outside of the McCloskey house in St. Louis, or the mostly peaceful protests in Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland and New York City. You know this was Black Lives Matter, Antifa and others from the far Left. 

My point is these peaceful protests become violent protests and the progressives in the Democratic Party don't ever seem to utter a single peep of protest at the violent protesters and by letting this group protest the Supreme Court justices, they are following the same pattern of violence and neither President Biden, nor his press secretary, nor anyone else in his administration as far as I know is uttering — that's right — uttering a word of protest. I'd say that's pretty pathetic, wouldn't you? 

Ironically, it's the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg who questioned the constitutional logic of Roe v. Wade. 

The Biden administration ought to be ashamed of itself. They ought to be defending the safety of the justices, but they are not and they are going to lose political support because of their bad behavior. You wait and see, folks. 

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Just to cap this part of my riff tonight, I'll repeat what I have been repeating all week long in the aftermath of this leaked Roe v. Wade draft opinion and that is, with all great respect to those who may disagree, nonetheless I must say it: Someone has to defend the life of the unborn. 

Sixty-three million children have died since Roe was decided in 1973 and most folks nowadays favor abortion restrictions outside the first trimester, which is essentially what the Mississippi case is supporting. 

So, let me again say: Save America. Save America's children. 

Now, back to the economy, it's been a rough week. 

It looks like the key averages will be down for their sixth straight week. Market interest rates are rising. The 10-year bond has jumped over 3%. Thirty-year mortgages are about 5.5%. Labor costs have jumped over 7% and most inflation measures are running about 8%. 

The Fed raised its target rate by 50 basis points. The biggest one-day meeting jump in two decades; but the problem is, the inflation rate has jumped to its fastest pace in four decades. So, they remain behind the curve. We're in for some more rough sledding as far as financial markets are concerned. 

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Part of the reason is past mistakes that the Biden administration and Jay Powell’s Fed refuse to own and if they don't own them, the chances are they won't fix them. Both of them are blaming inflation on Vladimir Putin and COVID, which, in my view, is mostly hogwash. Overspending, over-borrowing, over deficit funding, over-money printing and over-regulation are the culprits. 

Right now, I think folks have no confidence in either Biden or Powell. Powell hasn't even been reconfirmed. They should've put Larry Summers in there, who had the story right and still does. 

Powell is trying to whitewash the inflation problem and the ultimate recession threat. The longer he waits to act decisively, the worse the inflation is going to be and the deeper the recession is going to be and the more costly will be the consequences for working folks and investors everywhere. 

Today's jobs numbers were basically okay, a little on the soft side, but no recession just yet. At the pre-pandemic peak of the Trump boom, in February 2020, non-farm payrolls totaled 152.5 million. With today's 428,000 job increase, we are still 1.2 million jobs below the pre-pandemic peak. 

In other words, we are not yet creating new jobs. We are still replacing lost pandemic jobs and that's not the kind of healthy economic boom we should be in. We're still in the high inflation stage.  

A former Fed vice chair said the Fed target rate should go to 4%. It's less than 1% right now. Terrific. Where were you a year ago? 

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The Fed hasn't stopped buying bonds. They're still printing money. Seems to me it would be virtually impossible to avoid a recession in the next year or two. We need pro-growth, sound money, supply-side deregulation leadership, but what we're getting is big-government socialism, easy money, more spending, more regulations and more taxes.  

It's not good. It's all backwards. It's time for a change. Save America. Kill all these spending bills. The cavalry is coming. 

This article is adapted from Larry Kudlow's opening commentary on the May 6, 2022, edition of "Kudlow."