By John Ubaldi, “Ubaldi Reports”

With the usual media fawning over his every word President-elect Joe Biden introduced his economic team and like his national security team almost all have worked in the Obama and other Democratic administrations.

Biden had already announced that former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen will serve as U.S. Treasury Secretary.  At his unveiling Biden announced that Cecilia Rouse would be nominated as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.

The president-elect on Monday also formally announced Neera Tanden to be his nominee to the position as the director of Office of Management and Budget. Tanden is president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning public policy organization founded by John Podesta, who served as White House chief of staff to Clinton and counselor to Obama.

Biden also selected Wally Adeyemo to be deputy treasury secretary.

During the rollout of his economic team Biden stated, “We’re going to create a recovery for everybody, for all. We’re going to get this economy moving again,” he said. “Our message to everybody struggling right now is help is on the way.”

The question for the country and one thing that was never asked during his rollout of his economic team nor was asked at all during the presidential campaign is what kind of help will that be?

Those named to his economic team were part of the Obama administration economic group that oversaw the slowest economic recovery following a severe recession and had the dubious distinction of never obtaining over 3% GDP growth in a single year during his presidency.

During this period the country experienced stagnate growth, wage stagnation, the acceleration of income inequality, and the increase in the nations poverty rate.

Throughout the campaign Biden touted that he would begin repealing the Trump tax cuts, restore the top federal tax back to 39.6%, and raise the corporate tax income rate from 21% to 28%.  Biden’s tax plan also will limit the low capital-gains tax rate to the first $1 Million in profits, then finally tax Social Security to income above $400,000.

What type of help is Joe Biden promising? We have just learned from the December jobs report that the economy is slowing, and many parts of the country are again imposing severe lockdown of their state’s economy amid the surge in coronavirus cases.  How would raising $4 trillion in new taxes not repeat the situation of President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935?

It seems history is going to repeat itself as Biden’s proposals and polices espoused by Democrats are eerily similar to the tax increases proposed by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, expanded in 1936, and given added strength in 1937.  At the time the nation had regained its economic losses from the collapse of the U.S. economy from the market crash of 1929.  The tax increase imposed by Roosevelt ushered in a second Great Depression.

Many historians have claimed these tax increases sent a recovering U.S. economy back into the throes of the second Great Depression.”

The philosopher George Santayana, once stated, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  Are Joe Biden and the Democrats preparing to repeat the mistakes of the past?  If Biden and Democrats begin to implement their tax increases for the country, just as the nation’s economy is beginning to recover, won’t they just be repeating the past?

Back in August, Sen. Bernie Sanders while interviewed by Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” stated, “Joe Biden will become the most progressive president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And that, in this moment, is what we need.”

Do we really need this? Is this going to help small businesses across America, when many are struggling to keep their doors open to have to now deal with a substantial tax increase?

The country needs to understand its history, just like the 1930’s, the nation was coming out of the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression, and just like then Democrats again are proposing similar tax increases.  If these tax increases take effect, we could be taking a recovering economy and duplicate what happened then and cause a second Great Recession.

At this crucial juncture does small business need more taxes, more regulation and the ending of America’s energy independence, all would devastate those people Biden claims to want to help.

Just look who Biden has now tapped for his economic team. Not one person Biden selected has any practical business experience as all hail from academia or have life-long governmental service resumes.

Many of these economic advisor’s hail from the Obama administration that believed in massive federal regulations, higher taxes, and free flow of easy money from the Federal Reserve.

Biden selected former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is Biden’s new U.S. Treasury nominee.  Democrats and the media primarily focused on her being the first female treasury secretary but failed to mention she believes in the Keynesian principle of economic growth in massive federal stimulus spending.

One of the additional hires for Biden’s economic team is Jared Bernstein, an architect of the Obama stimulus who famously predicted in January 2009 that spending would keep unemployment below 8% and hit 7% by autumn of 2010. Not quite. The jobless rate hit 10% in October 2009, stayed at 9.9% through April 2010, and didn’t fall below 7% until November 2013. Mr. Bernstein put his trust in the Keynesian “multiplier” that $1 of new spending yields as much as an extra $1.57 or more of additional GDP. Wrong again.

Bernstein will be part of Biden’s National Economic Council.

One of the more controversial choices will be Neera Tanden to be White House budget director who favors massive higher taxes and is strong supporter of directing federal resources to address climate change.

A tweet she posted in October of 2019, in support of a proposal that would direct “sector-specific deployment policies, trillions of dollars in direct federal spending, an economy wide price on carbon, and mandatory emissions reductions in communities historically overburdened by pollution.” In this position she would directly be responsible for supervising an office that directly overseas the reviews off all regulations across government.

Upon entering office Biden will be inheriting an economy that is recovering far faster than many of the economists who espouse Keynesian economic principles had thought and much earlier than had been predicted.

The Atlanta Federal Reserve has recently raised its estimate for fourth-quarter growth to 11%, but could this be reversed in the first quarter of the New Year?

Could Biden’s economic team replicate the same polices that produced a stagnant economy, wage stagnation, the acceleration of income inequality and the increase of the poverty rate. Once a COVID vaccine is widely delivered the economy should soar but polices instituted by the incoming Biden administration could dampen that growth by the same economic team that ran the economic policy which produced the slowest recovery in decades.

Is this the help America is asking for?