Kamala Harris's Fingerprints Are All Over the Cost-of-Living Crisis

Kamala Harris is running as fast as she can away from admitting that there's a cost-of-living crisis. She tried to paper over the crisis last Friday when she gave us a stick-figure overview of her "economic plan." No word on how to deal with the crisis. That might have revealed how much she was to blame for the crisis. 

Instead, she solemnly told us that groceries were so high because of "price gouging" by big companies. She can't prove it. But it's easy to prove her wrong.

Fox News:

Prices paid by businesses (as measured by the producer price index) have risen 19.4 percent under the Biden-Harris administration. That’s precisely the same increase as occurred in the prices paid by consumers over this period (as measured by the consumer price index). In other words, inflation has been impacting the entire supply chain from producers to consumers.  

Had producers or retailers been price gouging (that is, increasing prices more than inflation justified), the rate of inflation for consumers would have exceeded that for producers. It did not.  

It's a good trick to use misdirection to try to avoid responsibility for high prices. Ordinarily, tricks don't work in politics because they're relatively easy to identify and expose.

But this election is different, and tricks by Democrats will work just fine. Kamala Harris is not going to be called to account for her role in giving the American people a 19% cost-of-living increase in less than four years. It would ruin the "joy."

Harris cannot evade responsibility for the passage of the $1.9 trillion "American Rescue Plan" or the $1 trillion absurdly named "Inflation Reduction Act." Every single Senate and House Republican voted against both bills. And in the Senate, both bills passed when Vice President Harris cast the deciding vote to break a deadlock. 

She touted both bills in speeches and praised "Bidenomics" to the skies. As inflation kept climbing, Harris and Biden assured us that the cost-of-living crisis was only "temporary."

Despite the highest interest rates since the 1980s, the Federal Reserve still can't hit its 2.3% yearly inflation target. That's because the spending by Biden-Harris has yet to taper off. The federal budget deficit for the 2024 fiscal year that ends on September 30 will be at least $1.9 trillion and may yet top $2 trillion when all the counting is done.

The Fed will try to cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage in September and perhaps as much as a half-percent more before the end of the year. Coming down from 6.3% is a long drop and there's no telling what consumers and businesses will find at the bottom.

But interest rates and government spending aren't the only catastrophes the Biden-Harris administration overseen. The number of regulations and the financial burden they place on every company in America might be the biggest sin the administration has committed yet.

A study released just last month found that the Biden-Harris administration will have increased regulatory costs per household by almost $50,000 (net present value) by the end of their current term in office. This corresponds with an annual cost of $6,300 per household for 10 years.   

This regulatory burden is actually excluded from inflation metrics, so it represents a cost in addition to the 19.4 percent inflation the Biden-Harris administration has inflicted on American consumers.  

The bottom line: Biden-Harris economic policies drove the debilitating inflation we’ve been experiencing over the past three and a half years. Claims of price gouging are a baseless attempt to avoid blame for what should have been the obvious consequences of those policies.

You're not going to hear anyone at the DNC taking responsibility for the cost-of-living crisis. You're not going to read or hear any major media going over the warnings by Republicans and Democrats alike that Biden's dangerous spending would lead to historic inflation.

"I told ya so" doesn't win elections. But it might lose Harris the presidency if Donald Trump and the Republicans can remind voters who is really responsible for the high cost of everything.