It’s been quite a spectacle watching people who credit Democrats with every job created and every percentage point gained in economic growth suddenly arguing that the White House is completely powerless in the face of our current economic predicament.
Wholesale prices rose 8.6% from a year ago in October, another record annual gain and the biggest spike in more than a decade. Inflation hit 6.2%, the highest rate of annualized inflation since the 1990s. Whereas once voters were promised “transitory” inflation, today, economists warn that we’ll be in this for a while.
“Reversing this trend is a top priority for me,” President Joe Biden said Nov. 10, after months of his administration’s dismissing inflation as a “high-class” and short-term predicament. There’s “nobody suggesting there’s unchecked inflation on the way — no serious economist,” the president promised a few months ago. Biden’s National Economic Council Deputy Director Brian Deese had argued that inflation was actually a good thing, and the entire administration had pushed the notion that the best prescription to alleviate inflation was more big progressive spending — part of a broader trend of Democrats saying utterly absurd things about the economy.
Meanwhile, a third of recent inflation increases has been propelled by energy prices, which spiked 6.7%. Biden defenders such as Paul Krugman, who have no compunction blaming Republican governors for seasonal variances in the spread of viruses, contend that Biden has no control over gas prices. Well, the first thing Biden did was freeze new oil and gas leases and shut down future pipelines. Biden now begs OPEC to increase production and help lower worldwide gas prices, but his domestic political goals and action run contrary to this position. Virtually every “green” plan in existence will intentionally, through mandates or bans or taxes or contrived “markets,” make fossil fuels more expensive or reduce use. Expensive gas is their goal. So how can Democrats credibly maintain they have a plan to stop rising prices?