Remember when the Biden administration’s so-called experts claimed inflation was “transitory”? They couldn’t have been more wrong.
Since President Biden took office, Iowans have seen prices rise 13.7 percent – adding an extra $666 to their monthly budget.
Coupled with falling real wages, Iowans have been strapped thin.
This combination of rising prices and falling real wages has hit rural Iowa communities particularly hard. As a result, according to a report issued by Iowa State University, the disposable incomes of rural Iowans fell 33 percent over the past 12 months alone.
It’s no wonder the high cost of living is the number one concern I hear about as I travel all of Iowa’s 99 counties.
However, here in D.C. the primary concern of President Biden and congressional Democrats has been enacting their partisan agenda.
They have refused to work with Republicans on sensible policies to tame inflation and provide targeted relief.
Instead, they rebranded the reckless tax and spending spree they had pursued for more than a year as “The Inflation Reduction Act.”
Never mind that outside experts uniformly concluded the bill’s hodge-podge of “green new deal” subsidies and tax hikes would do nothing to address inflation today.
Of course, if you want to stop inflation now caused by excessive government spending, the first thing you should do is stop spending.
Instead, Democrats doubled down with big government spending and coupled it with job killing tax hikes.
Democrats’ policy decisions made even less sense given only a week before we learned our economy had shrunk for two straight quarters – indicating a recession.
And, everyone knows, as President Obama once said, “The last thing you want to do is to raise taxes in the middle of a recession.”
The last thing our economy needed was another tax and spending spree, but Democrats just couldn’t let go of their wish list.
What’s more, in the height of hypocrisy, Democrats touted the Inflation Reduction Act as an example of fiscal responsibility. Yet, the supposed “savings” they claim will result from the bill was dwarfed in one day by President Biden’s unilateral student loan announcement, which will cost American taxpayers $500 billion to $1 trillion.
President Biden announced that he was wiping out $10,000 to $20,000 in student loan debt for people making as much as $125,000 or $250,000 for households.
That likely illegal action will send the bill for this student loan giveaway to Americans who did not attend college or paid off their college expenses, while fueling the fires of inflation.
So much for the lip service about the deficit and inflation.
Iowans are sick and tired of paying the price for the failures of the Biden economy.
