FOX Business’ Stuart Varney says in his latest “My Take” that the last surge in inflation ended with a recession and the defeat of an incumbent president.
Democratic Senate nominees in key swing states are trying to blame the Russia-Ukraine crisis and corporate greed for skyrocketing inflation, which hit a new 40-year high last month, despite economists warning for months that massive government spending could result have overheated the economy.
The consumer price index rose 8.5% year-on-year in March, marking the fastest rise since January 1982, when inflation hit 8.4%, according to a new Labor Department report released on Tuesday. The Biden administration continues to blame the Russia-Ukraine crisis, price gouging and supply chain issues for the price hike, while Republicans blame Biden’s green energy agenda for fueling America’s dependence on foreign oil markets and his $1.9 trillion heavy American bailout plan for overstimulating the economy with $1,400 stimulus checks mailed to Americans.
VULNERABLE HOUSE DEMOCRATES NOW SUPPORT LOWERING GAS PRICES AFTER SUPPORTING A POLICY TO RISE
Former North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley, the likely candidate for the state’s Democratic Senate, on Friday slammed big companies for posting “record profits” while North Carolina residents suffer from rising inflation.
Gasoline prices on April 11, 2022 in Washington, DC at several gas stations in the nation’s capital are around $4.00 per gallon for the cheapest kind. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/Getty Images)
“I think a couple of things that we need to be aware of is that this pandemic has certainly created a whole situation for us in terms of supply chain issues,” Beasley said during a campaign event in Hertford County. “We certainly know that companies are making record profits at a time when many people in North Carolina are struggling. And then, of course, this war with Putin in Ukraine created a whole sense of tension, which also affects the rising costs.”
Rep. Val Demings, a Democrat who wants to unseat Senator Marco Rubio, has criticized “big companies” for “pushing out” independent shops and food manufacturers.
“Meanwhile, corporate profiteers have used the pretext to raise prices – not because they have to or because they have a better product, but simply because they can. It is wrong. They’re making record profits while working families struggle,” she said in a January press release. “It’s simple: Corporate monopolies have caused prices to skyrocket and shelves to remain empty.”
Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators ahead of the midterm elections, has repeatedly blamed inflation on COVID-19-related issues affecting supply chains while pushing for trillions of dollars in new government spending under President Biden but failed Build Back Better plan.
“Ultimately, we’re hearing from economists that this package, along with some other needs in the president’s plans, will actually help us bring down inflation and stimulate the economy,” Hassan said in August.
“As long as there’s a pandemic, we’re going to see these disruptions in the supply chain, particularly in manufacturing and transportation,” Hassan said in December. “The economic plan that we’re looking at right now, the House passed one, the Senate isn’t going to pass exactly what the House did. It’s a 10 year plan. It is paid. It’s paid for by making sure billionaires and the biggest corporations can’t avoid taxes.”
Hassan recently joined other Democrats running for re-election this year, including Arizona’s Sens. Mark Kelly, Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto and Georgia’s Raphael Warnock, in lowering prices by proposing a temporary gas tax holiday that would reduce the would expose 18.4 cents-per-gallon federal tax through the midterms.
Gas prices to be posted March 23, 2022 at United Oil’s gas station in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes/AP Newsroom)
Warnock has similarly blamed rising prices on “the business practices of some companies with outsized influence on our economy,” and Cortez Masto, like many other Democrats, has argued that more government spending would not contribute to inflation.
Meanwhile, the White House coined the phrase “Putin’s price hike” to further shift the blame from the Biden administration, even as inflation rose sharply well before Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
Former Obama economic adviser Steven Rattner slammed the White House message in a tweet last month, saying Biden must “own” his share of the inflationary crisis.
Economists have been warning for a year that Biden’s American Rescue Plan would overstimulate the economy. In February last year, former Obama economic adviser Larry Summers said the plan could “unleash inflationary pressures not seen in a generation.”
Biden even appeared to acknowledge in November that his own legislation contributed to the crisis, saying the stimulus checks are partly responsible for consumer demand outstripping commodity supply.
“The irony is that people have more money now because I passed the first big bill,” Biden said at the time. “It changes people’s lives. But what happens when there’s nothing to buy and you have more money to compete for? [goods]? That creates a real problem.”
President Biden speaks during an event on the Affordable Care Act in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, April 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster/AP Newsroom)
Biden’s own economic advisers have also reportedly objected to claims that corporate greed is the problem. In February, members of the White House Council on Economic Advisors fought back the administration’s claims of linking inflation to corporate consolidation and monopoly power, the Washington Post reported.
The Labor Department reported on Tuesday that so-called core prices, which exclude more volatile measurements of food and energy, rose 6% year-on-year in January — a sharp rise from December, when they rose 5.5%.
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The White House continued to blame Russia for price hikes after the Labor Department report and approved the sale of E15 gasoline in the United States this summer in a bid to expand Americans’ access to affordable fuel supplies.
“The President is committed to doing everything in his power to ease the pain Americans are feeling at the pump as a result of Putin’s hike in gas prices,” the White House said Tuesday.