Sununu: Biden going to ‘try to take credit’ for jobs, economy during State of the Union

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a moderate Republican, said that President Biden would try to take credit for the economy ahead of his State of the Union speech next week but argued such achievements of the administration were not impressive.

Sununu, who is considering a White House bid of his own, argued on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that key economic indicators such as inflation and unemployment were bound to recover in the aftermath of the pandemic, dashing any claim from Biden to try to take credit.

“We’re going to hear [Biden] take credit for adding more jobs than ever before. After a pandemic, that wasn’t very hard,” Sununu said. “He’s gonna kind of talk about, oh, we have unemployment finally coming down and inflation coming down. Well, inflation was at a record high. Of course it’s coming down. It couldn’t have gotten any higher.”

The Biden administration has been able to take a few victory laps as better-than-expected economic figures have posted in the last few weeks. The January jobs report showed that unemployment in the U.S. was at its lowest point since 1969. 

But Sununu said there was dissonance between what the economic figures were saying and what families were feeling, citing Biden’s less-than-stellar job approval numbers. 

“It doesn’t matter about the speech. It matters what’s going on in this country. It matters just talking to people,” Sununu said. “Go into a grocery store and just talk to people in the cereal aisle. … Do they feel confident about the leadership of this president? No. Your own polls just showed that.”

Sununu also said that while some economic figures appear rosy now, the U.S. would face years of “stagflation” because of government spending, blasting the Treasury and the Biden administration for their spending policies.

“I think [Treasury Secretary] Janet Yellen should have been fired,” Sununu said. “She played politics knowing what the macroeconomic results were going to be.”