President Biden acknowledged on Friday that the White House must do more to fight inflation, even as American families are being squeezed by higher prices.
The president dismissed the idea that his $3 trillion in spending proposals would drive prices higher. In fact, he claims passage of his $1.75 trillion Build Back Better bill, along with the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the House last night, will actually bring inflation down.
Unfortunately, Joe Biden is a delusional fool and doesn’t know what he’s talking about. And that’s the good news.
“There’s a lot more to be done,” Biden said during remarks at the White House. “We still have to tackle the costs that American families are facing. This recovery is faster, stronger, fairer and wider than almost anyone could have predicted. But we want to make sure people continue to feel it in their lives.”
The president pointed to a rebound in job growth last month and the declining unemployment rate as evidence that his economic plan is working.
The “recovery” is an illusion. As with the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis, job growth has been weaker than it should be, economic growth has been anemic compared to other recoveries, and inflation is stealing whatever increases in take-home pay Americans have gotten the last 12 months.
“Before we passed the American Rescue Plan, forecasters said it would take until the end of 2023 to get to the 4.6 unemployment rate,” Biden said, referring to a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill that Democrats passed in March. “Today we’ve reached that rate two years before forecasters thought it was possible.”
As we all know, the “unemployment rate” is meaningless. What matters is the number of people employed. And that number still lags 1.7 percent from the beginning of the pandemic—nearly 3 million fewer jobs.
The labor force participation rate held steady at 61.6%—hardly cause for celebration.
What concerns the American people most is inflation. And the outlook there is not good.
Related: The Biden White House Will Pay for Playing Inflation Games
Inflation, as measured by the Federal Reserve’s preferred gauge, is at the highest level since May 1991. (In September, the so-called core personal consumption expenditures price index jumped to 4.4%, well above the Fed’s preferred target of 2%.) Still, Chairman Jerome Powell has not backed away from his stance that inflation is likely transitory and expected to cool next year.
“The timing of that is highly uncertain,” Powell told reporters this week following the Fed’s two-day policy-setting meeting. “But certainly we should see inflation moving down by the second or third quarter.”
Powell has been calling the spike in prices “temporary” since April. Seems an awful long time for a “temporary” increase in prices not to be worrisome.
But we shouldn’t worry because Joe Biden is on the case, and we’ll lick that inflation beast sure as shootin’. He’s not sure how yet, but if Biden says adding another trillion dollars in debt is going to whip inflation, we should believe it.
Because he’s done so well so far with the economy.
