By FP1 Strategies
It’s been eight months since President Biden took office and what we’ve seen so far is less than promising. Biden ran on the platform that he would “rebuild the middle class,” but his liberal economic policies are leaving working families behind.
In January 2021, overall inflation was at 1.4%. Today, it sits at a staggering, 5.3%.
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that everyday goods are far above what they were a year ago. Gas is currently up 42.7% since August of 2020, food has shot up 3.7%, plane tickets have increased 6.7% and clothing has surged 4.2%. The numbers don’t lie- it is becoming increasingly more and more expensive to live in Joe Biden’s America.
And let’s be perfectly clear: it is middle-class and lower-income people who take the brunt of the blow when inflation skyrockets. CNBC reports that the wealthiest Americans are more easily able to cope with inflation because the majority of their money is in things like stock and real estate. For lower-wage and middle-class workers however, most of their paycheck is spent on the goods that have jumped in price.
How did we get here? The answer is simple. President Biden’s spend-now-think-later agenda isn’t working, and it never will.
When Biden first took over the presidency, his first order of business was to push through a 1.9 trillion-dollar spending package on a party-line vote that he touted as COVID-19 relief. What this bill really did was pump more deficit dollars into the economy and incentivize unemployed workers to stay out of the workforce, leading to a nationwide labor shortage.
Democrats love to argue that this labor shortage has been a good thing for workers because it has shifted the power dynamic. While Democrats are correct that employers have upped wages as an incentive, they’re wrong to say that employees have gotten a pay raise. Thanks to inflation, hourly workers have actually taken a 2% pay cut, and the problem of rising prices will get worse if Biden continues to increase spending.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Biden’s budget proposal will end up costing an additional five trillion dollars of federal spending, which drastically increases the size of government and will send inflation through the roof, hurting working-class Americans the most.
Not surprisingly, inflation is emerging as a major issue in the upcoming midterm elections. According to a poll conducted by the NRCC in House battleground districts, 70% of voters are concerned about inflation and 60% disapprove of Joe Biden’s handling of rising prices. Inflation is a tax increase on the middle class, and the tax-and-spend Democrats will pay a steep price in 2022 for their liberal economic policies.
At FP1, we’re ready to expose the Biden Democrats for their harmful economic proposals. We’re going to help our Republican candidates make a clear and convincing case that they are better prepared to lead on pocketbook issues. Make no mistake, inflation is clearly an issue to watch in the coming months and it could well spell the end of the Democratic congressional majorities next year.