A restaurant owner struggling to find staff asked Joe Biden at a town hall this week how he plans to encourage people to re-enter the workforce and leave behind their large COVID unemployment checks:
DC EXAMINER – During a Wednesday town hall, John Lanni, the co-founder and owner of the Cincinnati-based restaurant group Thunderdome, asked the president, “How do you and the Biden administration plan to incentivize those that haven’t returned to work yet?”
Biden’s retort to the restaurant owner was both arrogant and authoritarian:
Biden, who was speaking in the auditorium of Mount Saint Joseph University, responded, “One, if you noticed, we kept you open. We spent billions of dollars to make sure restaurants can stay open, and a lot of people who now — who worked as waiters and waitresses decided that they don’t want to do that anymore because there’s other opportunities at higher wages, because there’s a lot of openings now in jobs.”
I can’t express how bothersome it is for Biden to respond by claiming that the government kept the restaurant operating. He was also forced to close his business by the government! It’s the very least the government could do to assist this man in keeping his restaurant running after they refused to allow him to do business. However, Biden acts as though the government did him a favor when, in fact, they owned it to this individual and businesses across the country.
Biden also absurdly suggests that people don’t want to work in restaurants anymore because of higher wages elsewhere. But that’s just rubbish. The problem isn’t people looking for higher paying jobs, the problem is people staying on unemployment! Unemployment benefits are the higher wages people are choosing and that’s exactly what John is asking about.
Biden then suggests that the real answer is for the restaurant owner pay more and not just a little more, but A LOT more to his wait staff:
But secondly, John, my guess is that um people being $7, $8 dollars an hour plus tips – I think John that you’re going to be finding $15 an hour more now. But you may pay that already.
Again, Biden acts as though the government did this man’s restaurant a big favor and now he has the responsibility of paying back that kindness by paying a lot more in wages to his wait staff, or else he’s out of luck.
If I’d have been that man, I might have responded to Biden “what the hell do you know about running a restaurant???” Because clearly, Biden doesn’t know jack about any of it. He’s just another authoritarian who acts as though the government rescued restaurants and businesses from being closed down permanently, when it was really the government who created this mess by mandating all these businesses shut down, and then heavily regulated how many customers they could serve inside their establishments for months and months.
What Biden doesn’t understand is that the government STILL owes this man for shutting everything down, by pushing for states to lower unemployment back to normal levels and requiring people to start looking for work to get off the government’s dime. That’s all he’s asking for, but instead Biden mocks him and tells him to pay more.
Here’s the videos:
Sixth question of CNN’s #BidenTownhall came from a Republican restauranteur who’s been struggling to find enough employees, so Biden proceeds to mock him and chastise him as somehow ungrateful because the government “kept you open” and people don’t like your profession anymore pic.twitter.com/YRrTweZk4o
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 22, 2021
This went on for a few minutes as Biden continued to trash the restaurant industry as a place where fewer and fewer people want to work because they aren’t paid enough, telling John Lanni that he better start paying employees at least $15/hr (pre-tip) or else #BidenTownHall pic.twitter.com/ZmvJoa1Wmz
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 22, 2021
