Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
Tuesday, President Joe Biden attempted to capitalize on a slight easing of inflation woes in the United States. However, there are indications that Biden’s victory lap might have been premature.
Speaking in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Biden said a five-month fall in U.S. inflation rates, to a still-high 7.1%, was evidence his economic policy was working.
Biden: “Now, 21 months later, we can see how our economic plan is working.”
Biden’s “economic plan” created surging inflation, sky-high energy costs, and poorer American families. pic.twitter.com/Ozu6tBKaut
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 13, 2022
“Make no mistake — prices are still too high,” Biden said. “We have a lot more work to do. But things are getting better, headed in the right direction.”
The president followed these relatively benign comments with remarks so self-aggrandizing as to beggar belief.
“When I took office, we inherited a nation with a pandemic raging and an economy that was reeling,” Biden said. “We acted quickly and boldly to vaccinate the country and to put in place a — a new economic strategy — a strategy built on an economy that was based on ‘from the bottom up and the middle out.’
Middle-out economics is a thought process that holds that economies must factor in protections for the middle class. The theory is that if the middle class is left with no money, big businesses will be left with no customers.
The president’s success with inflation and the cost of living over his first two years in office could be better described as bottomed out, as record-high inflation had persisted until only the last five months.
Even now, the rate of inflation can only be celebrated as being not as bad as it could have been or is in other nations. U.S. inflation has merely gone from all-time to standard-issue bad.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly Consumer Price Index for November, it costs 65.7% more for fuel than a year ago, 15.5% for piped gas, 14.2% for transportation, 13.7% for electricity, and 10.6% for food.
“Democrats’ failed economic policies are CRUSHING American families and WIPING OUT their bank accounts,” Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) tweeted yesterday.
Democrats' failed economic policies are CRUSHING American families and WIPING OUT their bank accounts.
According to today's #CPI release, price increases over the year include:
⛽️ Fuel: +65.7%
💡 Electricity: +13.7%
🥫 Food: +10.6%— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) December 13, 2022
Biden acknowledged that people still face quite the challenge in making ends meet, but he insisted that his “bottom up, middle out” approach, in all its vagueness, was the way forward.
“What is clear is my economic plan is working and we’re just getting started,” Biden said.