On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris falsely claimed she and President Biden “have reduced heating and electricity bills.” “But in reality, electricity prices have gone up, a drastic amount,” notes a TV station in San Diego.
“For working families, we have reduced heating and electricity bills so folks have more money in their pockets to buy things like schools supplies, replace the dishwasher or take a family vacation,” Harris said during a speech at Bowie State University, a predominantly-black institution in Maryland.
In reality, electricity bills are up 11.9%, fuel oil bills are up 27.7%, and natural gas is up 26.7% over last year.
There was a negative reaction to Harris’s remarks. “Lying is the only thing Kamala ‘Word Salad’ Harris is good at,” said author Steve Tobak.
Fox News reports:
Vice President Kamala Harris is getting bombarded with criticism for touting that the Biden administration has reduced electricity bills for working families.
One California restaurant owner, Jeff Kacha, is particularly frustrated with the Vice Presidents’ comments, arguing on “Fox & Friends First” that his restaurant’s electric bill has risen to $8,000 a month.
Navy veteran Joe Billie says his “heating bills were $200-250 during winter” in 2017-2020, but now, they have risen to sharply to “over $375 and it’s a mild winter.”
Joe Concha of Fox News notes that “Wages are not remotely keeping up with inflation,” which is much higher now than under Trump.
Biden’s policies have caused inflation, according to economists like Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers, and Obama advisor Steven Rattner. As Rattner noted in the New York Times last year, Biden spent “an unprecedented amount” of taxpayer money, which resulted in “too much money chasing too few goods.”
Biden has recently doubled down on big spending policies that make inflation worse. In November, Biden renewed a pause in student loan repayments, one of many Biden policies that make it harder for the Federal Reserve to cut the inflation rate.
In the Washington Post, Matthew Yglesias noted that the long pause in student loan payments since 2020 has spawned inflation and disproportionately benefited the wealthy, at the expense of taxpayers who mostly don’t have college degrees. Yglesias noted that Biden’s suspension of student loan repayments drives up the inflation rate:
“Most Americans say the most important problem facing the country is inflation — and President Joe Biden just made it worse. His administration announced last week it would extend yet again the emergency suspension of student loan repayments, even as his frenemies on the left are urging a program of complete forgiveness of all student debt.”
Rapid inflation is already occurring due to massive government spending under Biden, he says, and suspending student loan repayments makes matters worse. Yglesias is a former staffer of the progressive think-tank Center for American Progress, and a co-founder of the progressive news source Vox.
In addition to suspending student loan repayments, Biden has also attempted to forgive $10,000 or $20,000 in student loan debt for many borrowers, at a cost to taxpayers of $500 billion. That $500 billion student loan forgiveness plan was declared illegal by federal judges. But the Biden administration has appealed these rulings, asking the Supreme Court to reinstate the student loan forgiveness plan because it claims, among other things, that the challengers were the wrong people to challenge the plan, and thus lack legal standing to challenge it.
Jason Furman, chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, called Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan “reckless.” Furman says, “Pouring roughly a half-trillion dollars of gasoline on the inflationary fire that is already burning is reckless.” Biden’s plan will increase economic inequality and the national debt, as even the liberal Washington Post has recognized.
