“No one is predicting a recession now,” President Joe Biden fibbed Thursday, though “there may be recession in 2023.” In fact, America’s already at the brink, as the US economy shrank in the first quarter of 2022, contracting by an ugly 1.4% — the first such drop since early in the pandemic.

This, when the expectation was 1.1% growth. That’s four of the five quarters under this president that have seen growth not meet economists’ consensus predictions.

Biden claims the nation’s still seeing “enormous” growth, but in fact that’s an illusion thanks to four-decade-high inflation, now past 8.5% (and higher for gas and food). All as we stare down a war in Europe and a China COVID crisis likely to inflict further shocks.

In other words, after the boom years under Trump and a post-COVID recovery starting to put out green shoots, the US now faces a perfect economic storm. 

“Unemployment’s the lowest rate since 1970,” the president also cherry-picked, ignoring the fact that his stat doesn’t include the millions of working-age Americans who aren’t looking for work as the nation struggles to get back to its pre-COVID number of jobs.

The simple fact is that Biden and the Democrats who control Congress have been re-imposing the policies of the 1970s, and the result is clearly the same stagflation the country suffered then.

Their American Rescue Plan dumped $1.9 trillion into an economy already running hot and touched off the inflation conflagration (as a Fed study shows). Their still-ongoing war on US energy production reproduces the impact of the ’70s “oil shocks.”

And all they offer is more of the same: Biden’s budget calls for yet more deficit-spending, as did his now-dead Build Back Better bill. And his plan to forgive billions in student-loan debt would further goose the money supply.

His policies are wreaking disaster, and all he offers is bogus assertions (“every economist agrees,” when they don’t remotely, is a regular line), blithe denial (“inflation is transitory”) and lame blame-shifting (first “corporate greed,” then “Putin’s price hike”).

Biden spent his entire life, in Congress and then as vice president, not being personally responsible for anything and tossing out endless malarkey about how everything bad was the other team’s fault. And it’s awfully hard for a 79-year-old to change his ways.

He doesn’t even show any sign of understanding what’s going on, though it’s clear to most Americans: 66% disapprove of his handling of the economy, per a recent AP poll.

Someone needs to drag the president into facing reality. Otherwise, the United States is in for some major suffering, along with more insulting Biden blarney about how it’s all someone else’s fault.