Joe Biden said inflation was “transitory.” Since then, inflation has increased. How much? On Twitter, Joel Griffith of the Heritage Foundation provides some numbers, with egg prices rising 38%, and the cost of household staples like coffee, flour, and butter rising by over 20%:
“Transitory” inflation over the past year:
⛽️Gas +44.0%
✈️Airfare +27.7%
🥚Eggs +38.0%
🥓Bacon +11.7%
🍗Chicken +17.6%
🥛Milk +15.6%
☕️Coffee +20.3%
🥪Lunchmeat 18.0%
🍞Flour +22.7%
🍊Citrus +11.9%
🧈Butter +22.4%
🍚Rice +12.7%
🥖Bread +13.7%
🍜Soup +19.1%
— Joel Griffith (@joelgriffith) August 10, 2022
Inflation is much higher in the United States than in many foreign countries. It’s more than 6% lower in Japan, where the inflation rate is just 2.4%. The inflation rate is only 3.4% in Switzerland, more than 5 percentage points less than in America.
Joe Biden’s big spending has fueled inflation, according to even Democratic economists like Larry Summers and Obama advisor Steven Rattner. As Rattner noted in the New York Times, Biden has spent “an unprecedented amount” of taxpayer money, which resulted in “too much money chasing too few goods.” Even progressive media like Vox recognize that Biden’s stimulus package “worsened inflation.”
This Spring, Biden signed an across-the-board increase in federal spending that will increase inflation even further. Last May, Biden proposed a record $6 trillion budget that “would push federal spending to its highest sustained levels since World War II” as a share of our economy, reported the New York Times. The Biden administration itself forecast budget deficits at more than $1 trillion for at least the next decade if his budget plan were adopted.
Biden’s proposed “Build Back Better” plan would also lead to more inflation, according to economists across the political spectrum. Former Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf said it will “push up” inflation. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s Marc Goldwein said it would create “inflationary pressures.” Bank of America’s Ethan Harris said it will “create even more price pressure.”
The U.S. economy recently shrank, and it underperformed many European economies in the first half of 2022, a shift from the Trump era, when the U.S. economy outperformed Europe, especially during the pandemic year of 2020, when Britain, France and Italy experienced much sharper economic declines than the U.S. The U.S. economy shrank 3.5% in 2020. The economy shrank much more in Europe: 7.9% in France, 9.9% in the United Kingdom, and 8.9% in Italy.
