When prices started shooting up this year after President Joe Biden took office, he insisted inflation was merely “transitory” and would soon vanish. Instead, it’s risen ever-faster — up 6.2 percent in October vs. a year ago, the Labor Department reported Wednesday, for the biggest jump in 31 years.
Yet Biden’s economic prescription in November is still the same as in January: Spend more, tax more, borrow more.
No matter that his policies have inflation accelerating, starting to spiral out of control: In January, the last Trump month, prices were up just 1.4 percent over the prior year. By March, it was 2.6 percent; April, 4.9 percent. Over the summer, the 12-month uptick hovered at 5.4 percent; now it’s spurted to 6.2 percent.
Meanwhile, wholesale prices last month were a truly scary 8.6 percent higher than a year ago, the seventh straight month they soared at record clips. That guarantees yet more hikes in consumer prices.
The numbers shocked economists, who’d expected smaller increases. San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank President Mary Daly called it “eye popping.” Bank of America economist Michelle Meyer frets at how price increases are expanding all across the economy: “The broadening of inflationary pressures” is “striking.”
Fuel-oil prices are up nearly 60 percent; furniture, 13 percent; gas at the pump, 50 percent; eggs 12 percent; used cars, 26.4 percent. Your Thanksgiving turkey may set you back fully twice as much as in 2019. Team Biden is warning Americans to brace for sticker shock on heating costs this winter.
It also means “rising” pay really isn’t: Adjusted for inflation, average weekly earnings are now down 1.6 percent since last year.
Biden admits the news is bad, claiming Wednesday that “reversing the trend” is his “top priority.” So why is he still pushing his multitrillion-dollar Build Back Better plan, which can only make matters worse?
Sen. Joe Manchin (W. D-Va.) has it right: “The inflation tax is real, and DC can no longer ignore the economic pain Americans feel every day.” If Democrats still ram the bill through, Americans will know who to blame for yet more of that pain.