Inflation is up 8.3%, but the man most responsible has nothing but scapegoats.
8.3% inflation is now good news. Think about that one for a moment.
Today’s inflation report is terrible news, of course, because for yet another month under Joe Biden, inflation is sky high. And even though April’s 8.3% annualized rate is less than March’s 8.5% — the first monthly decline in eight months — it once again exceeded the expectations of “experts,” the economic dolts who continue to be unable to see what the rest of us do quite clearly.
Bad news: According to The Wall Street Journal, “The so-called core-price index — which excludes the often-volatile categories of food and energy — increased 0.6% on the month, a sharp pickup from March’s 0.3% gain.” In other words, the prices most people are affected by increased even faster in April than in March.
More bad news: Much of what caused inflation to ease a bit in April was moderating gas prices. Yet gas prices are back up in May, hitting a nominal record yesterday and breaking that record again today at $4.40 a gallon.
Has inflation peaked? It’s hard to tell, but when the economy is experiencing shortages of basics like baby formula, it sure doesn’t feel like it.
Never fear, though, the man who made this mess reassured an anxious nation yesterday by garbling a deceitful teleprompter message and taking no responsibility for anything. About the only thing Biden said that was true is this: “I know that families all across America are hurting because of inflation.”
The rest was a hash of either unintelligible Bidenisms or blame-casting:
“The number one threat is the strength, and and uh that strength that we built is inflation.”
“We control all three branches of government. Well, we don’t really.”
“I think our policies help, not hurt.”
“Republicans love to attack me as a big spender, as if that’s the reason why inflation has gone up.”
“It’s not because of spending. We brought down the deficit.” (We noted two days ago why that claim is a lie.)
So whose fault is it?
Biden blamed “a once-in-a-century pandemic” that “shut down our global economy.” No, politicians shut down our economy. He also blamed “Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine.” To be sure, the war has put intense upward pressure on gas and food prices, but Putin invaded because he knew Biden is weak, and in any case the U.S. economy could withstand it better if Biden wasn’t shutting down American oil production and redirecting even more food (corn) into our gas tanks — the latter of which he counterfactually touted as something that will “drive down prices.”
He called the pandemic and Putin the “two leading causes of inflation,” but he had a third villain: “The Ultra-MAGA Agenda.” Note that anytime a leftist puts the word “ultra” in front of something conservative, it’s meant to scare people, not to inform them.
Here it’s also meant to deceive. Biden cast it as a choice. His plan, he said, is “to lower employer — lower everyday costs for — everyday costs for hardworking families and lower the deficit by asking large corporations and the wealthiest Americans to not engage in price gouging and to pay their fair share in taxes.”
By contrast, he warned, “The Republican plan is to increase taxes on the middle-class families and let billionaires and large companies off the hook as they raise profit and — raise prices and reap profits at record number — record amounts.”
He’s conveniently referring to an ill-advised plan from Senator Rick Scott of Florida, not Wisconsin, as Biden said. “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount,” Scott said in February. Democrats predictably cast that general policy idea as a specific plan to raise taxes on millions of Americans. The truth is that Democrats do plan to raise taxes on millions of Americans by allowing the 2017 Republican tax cuts to expire.
Republicans, Biden said, “don’t want to solve inflation by lowering your costs, they want to solve it by raising your taxes and lowering your income.” It is Biden’s inflation that has wages failing to keep up.
Back to that deficit canard, Biden did in fact proclaim another truth: “Reducing the deficit is one of the main ways we can ease inflationary pressures.” The problem is his deficit “reduction” is entirely an accident of timing combined with a failure to pass his $3.5 trillion Build Back Better agenda.
And here’s the other inconvenient truth: Yes, a lot of reckless COVID spending happened on Donald Trump’s watch, though he was dealing with a Democrat-controlled Congress writing that legislation. But it wasn’t until Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan redistributed so much more “free” money after the recovery was already well under way that inflation really began to take off. When Trump left office, inflation was still 1.4% and gas was $2.39 a gallon.
Biden says, “I want every American to know that I’m taking inflation very seriously and it’s my top domestic priority.” That may be the most terrifying thing he said.
Written by Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post ~ May 11, 2022
