According to the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, it costs a typical family $13,327 more per year to maintain the same standard of living it had at the beginning of the Biden-Harris administration. That’s a staggering increase for the same goods and services in the span of less than four years, and Americans are the ones bearing the brunt of this sticker shock, as the price of groceries spiked 22 percent, shelter costs went up 23 percent, and energy prices grew by 34 percent, among other necessities. And the reason costs are so much higher today is because of Washington Democrats’ addiction to reckless spending.
Eager to begin implementing their big government agenda, Democrats seized on the pandemic as an excuse to spend $1.9 trillion on their so-called American Rescue Plan in 2021. They ignored warnings that the bill was too big and that it could “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation,” and they pushed the bill ahead with Vice President Harris casting critical tie-breaking votes. As predicted, inflation began to accelerate almost immediately.
The Biden-Harris inflation crisis is a classic case of too many dollars chasing too few goods. Democrats flooded our economy with their reckless spending, and inflation began to climb as a result. It kept on climbing for years, reaching a 40-year high and causing untold economic pain across the country.
But this inflation crisis did not deter Democrats. In fact, as inflation was soaring, the Biden-Harris administration was actually trying to force through yet another reckless taxing-and-spending spree, this time with a massive $3.5 trillion price tag. One can only imagine how much worse inflation would have been had this bill passed.
For the last few years, the American people have been paying more and getting less. They have had to put more on their credit cards and dip into their savings. Others put off necessities and niceties to make ends meet. How many Americans had to lower their standard of living because of higher costs? How many car repairs, family vacations, or braces for the kids had to be put off because of inflation?
Then there’s the additional economic pain of rate hikes the Federal Reserve was forced to impose to deal with the Biden-Harris inflation crisis. Those rate hikes meant higher credit card interest rates, higher rates for car loans, and higher mortgage rates. Americans who had to put more on their credit cards to deal with high food or energy prices are now facing increased challenges paying off that debt. Other Americans are finding the American dream of homeownership out of their reach, facing elevated mortgage rates on top of already staggering home prices.
When the history of the Biden-Harris administration is written, I suspect it will be defined by the historic inflation crisis caused by its reckless spending. Years of elevated prices have taken a toll on Americans’ budgets, and I fear those effects may linger. Americans simply cannot afford another reckless taxing-and-spending spree.