FLASHBACK: Bill Clinton May Not Have Been Able To Define ‘Is’ But He Could Define A Recession

The Biden administration is struggling to define what a “recession” is, but even the man who famously couldn’t define “is” was able to define a “recession.”

Clinton famously struggled to define what the one-syllable word “is” meant during his impeachment trial in 1999.

“It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the, if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not – that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement,” Clinton said while trying to defend himself against allegations he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky.

But Clinton had no problem slapping a definition onto what a “recession” is, which is now coming in handy.

“Well, a recession is two quarters in a row of negative growth, I don’t think we’re gonna have that,” he said during a discussion with reporters and then-President-elect George W. Bush, on Dec. 19, 2000.

We don’t agree with Bill Clinton on much, but we do agree with him that a recession is two periods of negative GDP growth pic.twitter.com/N80VMfogXY

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 28, 2022

Two consecutive quarters of declining GDP has been used as a rule of thumb to define a recession for decades, economist Julius Shiskin declared in 1974. Administration officials have argued, however, that the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) looks at several other factors, like consumer and business spending, the labor market, industrial production and incomes to make a determination about a recession. (RELATED: CNN Reporter’s Tweet Comes Back To Haunt Him As He Tries To Dismiss Recession Fears)

Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis released Thursday showed U.S. real GDP decreased at an annual rate of 0.9% in the second quarter of 2022.

The Biden administration disputed claims that the U.S. is currently in a recession, with the administration posting in a recent blog that two consecutive quarters of falling GDP is not indicative of a recession.

White House Director of the National Economic Council Brian Deese said Thursday that “virtually nothing signals” a recession and instead said the economy was in a “transition” phase and that “slowing” was expected.

“But I think if you look at the full data and the type of data that NBER looks at, virtually nothing signals that this period in the second quarter is recessionary.”

Meanwhile, press secretary Karine Jean Pierre said the economy was in a “transition” rather than a recession.

“We are in a transition. We had this strong economic growth because of the work this president has done in the past 18 months and now what we’re seeing is a transition into stable and steady growth. But we get it, we get that people are feeling a little bit more pain,” Jean-Pierre said.

Jean-Pierre previously declined to define a “recession” saying she would leave it to the NBER.

“I’m not going to define it from here,” she said during a recent press briefing. “I’m just going to leave it to the NBER as we have stated and how they define recession.”