C’MON MAN: Are Our Costs Really Going Down?

President Biden’s claim of lowering our everyday costs doesn’t hold up when measured against prices at the pump; a gallon of gas now costs nearly 80% more than it did two years ago.

President Joe Biden took the stage at a recent  Democratic National Committee Event to proclaim “Democrats are lowering your everyday costs like prescription drugs, healthcare premiums, energy bills, and gas prices (emphasis added).”  The President also stated Republicans are “…going to increase everyday costs” on Americans.  There’s no way to prove the second part of his statement, but it is easy enough to check in on his claim that Democrats are lowering our everyday costs like gasoline prices.  Below is a chart that displays the monthly price of gasoline since November 2020, when the general election awarded control of the White House, U.S. Senate, and U.S. Congress to Democrats.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration

 

President Biden’s claim of lowering our everyday costs doesn’t hold up when measured against prices at the pump; a gallon of gas now costs nearly 80% more than it did two years ago.

Meanwhile, his fellow Democrat, Senator Elizabeth Warren, authored a letter to the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, expressing concern about the Fed’s recent decisions to keep hiking interest rates.  As Powell stated in September, “We have got to get inflation behind us.  I wish there was a painless way to do that.  There isn’t.” Mr. Powell’s sentiment has merit. Consider the annual inflation rate (12-month CPI-U) since that same point in time (November 2020), as displayed in the chart below.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

 

It’s interesting that Senator Warren wants to point fingers at the Fed.  After all, the Fed’s Open Market Committee is only attempting to rein in the skyrocketing inflation that has occurred under the watch of  Senator Warren and her colleagues.  Maybe she’s conveniently forgetting the trillions of dollars that have been force-fed to our economy through programs like the American Rescue Plan Act or the deceptively-named Inflation Reduction Act.

Inflation and the cost of living is the most important issue to Iowa voters according to the most recent ITR Foundation Poll.  The perspectives offered by President Biden and Senator Warren seem completely out of touch with reality.  They likely play a big part in Iowans’ plans to send conservatives to Des Moines and Washington, D.C. to represent them next year.

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