Watching Biden and his administration as they’re “scrambling” to desperately redefine “recession” is as reassuring as watching a chicken run around with its head cut off.

Their problem: Biden’s economic advisors know that a recession is defined as two quarters of negative GDP growth. They repeatedly said so:

• Biden’s National Economic Council Director Brian Deese in March 2008: “Of course economists have a technical definition of recession, which is two consecutive quarters of negative growth.”
• Biden’s Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers Cecilia Rouse in May 2022: “Two quarters of negative growth” is an indicator of a recession.
• Biden’s economic adviser Jared Bernstein in September 2019: A recession is “defined as two consecutive quarters of declining growth.”
• Biden’s economic adviser Heather Boushey in May 2019: As a “rule of thumb,” a recession refers to “two quarters of negative growth in GDP.”

Biden’s team may try to change the definition of a recession now, but don’t worry. The media’s fact checkers have already ruled that two negative quarters is the standard definition of a recession. We’ve got the receipts:

• Washington Post Fact Checker: “Two negative quarters in a row is a standard indicator for an economic recession.”
• CNN’s Daniel Dale: “You need two straight [quarters] for a recession.”
• PolitiFact: “The general rule of thumb is that it takes two quarters of negative growth to signal a recession.”
• USA Today: “A recession is generally defined as two consecutive quarters of declining GDP.”

Biden’s desperation to deny reality is palpable. The American people would be a whole lot better off if he put that kind of work into actually making their lives better. But alas, no such luck.