Dear Editor,

President Biden’s poll ratings currently are suffering, in large part because of the mess he inherited and the huge task of extricating the country out of it. The process will take time, even as we all are eager to escape the COVID-caused mire in our lives.

In its first year, the Biden administration and Democratic Congress has delivered, by historical standards, a list of impressive achievements for the American people:

• The country’s 2021 growth rate (GDP, 5.7%) is the highest in four decades.

• The most recent unemployment rate was 4%, closest to its 21st century low.

• The number of new jobs created was the highest first-year total for any American president.

• A success that numbers can’t fully capture:  the millions of people and businesses who, because of the American Rescue Plan relief payments, were able to claw their way through the catastrophic disruptions of COVID-19.

• Passage of the expanded child tax credit dramatically reduced child poverty in a period of family crisis.

• Funding for rebuilding our roads and bridges, modernizing our electric grid, and expanding broadband access to rural and other underserved areas.

There’s much more to include. Suffice to conclude that Democrats have delivered sane, rational, deliberative governance and relief from the exhausting torrent of tweets and the ascendance of dangerous crackpots.

Inflation, in large part a consequence of our rapid recovery and the infusion of relief money in the economy, is being addressed, with the Federal Reserve having the heaviest role.

Radical Republicans, congealed into the party of breakers, the party of “No,” desperately use cultural conflicts to distract Americans from the reality:  Democrats whom the nation elected in 2020 are doing the hard work the people asked them to do. They are delivering.

Tom Denton

Highland, N.Y.