The Washington Post Opinion The 10 worst things President Biden did in 2023 By Marc A. Thiessen Columnist Follow December 29, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST

 The Washington Post 

Opinion  The 10 worst things President Biden did in 2023

By Marc A. Thiessen

Columnist

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December 29, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST

President Biden in the Oval Office on Oct. 19. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)

After the disasters Joe Biden unleashed in 2022, I didn’t imagine his presidency could get worse — but it did. Here are the 10 worst things Biden did in 2023:

10. He made the child-care crisis worse. As my Post colleague Alyssa Rosenberg and I pointed out in September, child-care costs have been rising at nearly twice the rate of inflation. We proposed expanding the State Department’s au pair program, making this lower-cost option available to more families. Instead, the Biden administration put forward a plan that would double the cost of hiring an au pair by tying compensation to state and local laws on minimum wage, which will effectively put the program out of reach for many working families.

9. He made us more dependent on Russian uranium. If Biden wants to speed Americans’ transition from fossil fuels to electricity, we will need more nuclear power. Yet the president restricted development on more than 1 million acres of land that includes the only U.S. source of high-grade uranium ore. Since the United States is the largest purchaser of Russian enriched uranium, the move increases our dependence on Russia at a time when we are trying to isolate Vladimir Putin.

(Marc A. Thiessen: The 10 best things President Biden did in 2023)

8. He circumvented the Supreme Court on student loan forgiveness. With the stroke of a pen, Biden tried in 2022 to cancel half a trillion dollars in student debt, only to see his unconstitutional plan blocked by the Supreme Court. So the president used other regulatory means to write off nearly $132 billion in student debt anyway — effectively forcing blue-collar workers to subsidize the higher education of white-collar professionals and launching a frontal assault on Congress’s power of the purse.

7. He failed to police antisemitism on the left. When Biden declared his candidacy for president in 2019, he condemned the right-wing bigots in Charlottesville “chanting the same antisemitic bile heard across Europe in the ’30s.” Yet he failed to forcefully confront the explosion of antisemitic bile on the left, from college campuses to Capitol Hill, after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel.

What to know about the downed Chinese balloon

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U. fighter aircraft downed a Chinese spy balloon off the South Carolina coast on Feb. 4. (Video: The Washington Post)

6. He allowed a Chinese spy balloon to violate U.S. airspace. For days, the Biden administration did nothing to stop the 20-story Chinese craft until someone in Montana looked up at the sky and said: What the hell is that? Even Democrats, including former defense secretary and CIA director Leon Panetta, Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.) and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill.), called the president out for letting it sail over our country for a week before finally shooting it down over the Atlantic.

5. He allowed Iran to attack U.S. forces with impunity. As president, Donald Trump drew a clear red line with Iran’s leaders, warning that the United States would respond militarily against Iran or its terrorist proxies if they killed a single American. He enforced this by taking out Iran’s terrorist mastermind, Qasem Soleimani, in 2020. On Oct. 7, Iran’s proxy Hamas killed more than 30 Americans during its attack against Israel. Since then, Iran’s partners in terror have carried out reportedly more than 100 attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, Syria and the Red Sea. Yet Biden has imposed no cost on Iran, sending a message of weakness that invites more attacks.

4. He allowed the worst border crisis in U.S. history get even worse. In fiscal 2023, the record for the most encounters at the southern border was broken for the third straight year. Just before Christmas, there were more than 12,600 migrant encounters in a single day — the highest total ever recorded. A December Wall Street Journal poll found that 64 percent disapprove of Biden’s border policies, while just 27 percent approve.

3. He blocked allies from giving Ukraine a clear path to NATO membership. At a July summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, a majority of NATO allies wanted to set a specific timetable for Kyiv’s admission into the alliance, but Biden rejected their entreaties in fear of provoking Russia — giving Putin a major victory. It’s the same flawed reasoning that has led Biden to withhold critical weapons Ukraine needs to retake its territory.

2. He continued to slow-roll weapons to Ukraine. After resisting for nearly year, Biden finally agreed in January to provide Ukrainian forces with M1A1 Abrams tanks, but the first tanks did not arrive until September. After 19 months of Ukrainian pleading, Biden provided Kyiv with Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) in October — but the United States supplied only a few medium-range missiles, which travel 100 miles, instead of longer-range missiles that have a 190-mile range. And after denying Ukraine’s entreaties for F-16 fighters for more than a year, Biden reversed course in May — but U.S. training delays prevented their deployment. He has provided Kyiv with just three Patriot air-defense systems, leaving Ukrainian troops, schools, homes, hospitals and critical infrastructure exposed. Biden’s delays have undermined Ukraine’s counteroffensive, prolonged the war and weakened support in Congress for military aid to Ukraine.

1. He announced he is running for reelection. Biden is the most unpopular president since the end of World War II. Monmouth polling in October found 76 percent say he is too old to serve another term; CNN polling in August found that 67 percent of Democrats want someone else to be their party’s nominee. Yet Biden is running, forcing a Biden-Trump rematch that most Americans say they don’t want — and making a second Trump term more likely.

This list barely scratches the surface, so, as I do each year, here are some dishonorable mentions: Biden canceled the seven remaining oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; he transferred $6 billion in frozen oil funds to Iran as a ransom for five American hostages; he announced the most draconian restrictions on auto emissions ever to try to force Americans to transition to electric vehicles; he nominated judges who could not answer basic questions about the Constitution; and he embraced “Bidenomics” even though only 14 percent say they have been helped by Biden’s economic policies.

Year 3 was a disaster. I tremble to think what 2024 will bring.

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Opinion by Marc Thiessen

Marc Thiessen writes a column for The Post on foreign and domestic policy. He is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush. Twitter