The House majority leader admitted to Fox News Wednesday that inflation is a huge problem, a turnaround from January statements.
Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer, Md., in January called the Biden economy good, claiming Democrat’s spending bill could fix inflation.
“Inflation is a huge problem,” Hoyer told Fox News Wednesday. “It’s a huge problem for Americans. Supply shortages—particularly in grocery stores—a huge problem for Americans.”
We need to deal with that,” the leading House Democrat said.
White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein recently noted U.S. inflation is “unacceptably high,” while pointing to improvement in areas like gas prices, which Bernstein claimed were “moving in the right direction.”
Hoyer insisted during his Fox appearance that the Biden administration was working to tame soaring inflation. He pointed to measures like the recently passed Lower Food and Fuel Costs Act, which The Congressional Budget Office estimates will add $700 million to the public debt over the next five years.
Washington-based think tank R Street institute disagreed with the house majority leader’s description of the bill as a solution to inflation. The think tank opined that the bill could actually make things worse, increasing the higher prices and inflation it was designed to fight.
Inflation rose 9.1 percent for the 12 months ending in June, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That was the highest rate of rising consumer costs recorded during the last 40 years.
Last year, President Joe Biden claimed inflation worries were overblown, expecting any price increases to be temporary.
“Some folks have raised worries that this could be a sign of persistent inflation,” Biden said in remarks made July 19, 2021. “But that’s not our view. Our experts believe and the data shows that most of the price increases we’ve seen are — were expected and expected to be temporary.”
Inflation, instead, gathered a head of steam as a seeming end to the pandemic saw people travel and spend more, making an already tight supply chain snap. Then, in February, Russia invaded Ukraine.
Biden immediately slapped punitive economic sanctions on Russia and its leaders, freezing monetary assets in Western countries and seizing property like yachts, planes and mansions. Soon after, the West began sanctioning energy and most every export from Russia.
Gas and oil prices jumped through the roof on the diminishing supply just as the world’s economy was beginning to rev up after COVID. Then, fears about sanctions on shipping led many to shun exports of Russian grain and fertilizer, making food prices rise rapidly since Russia and Ukraine are major world suppliers of food and fertilizer.
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