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.
