During a CNN town hall event over the summer, President Joe Biden attempted to downplay the degree to which Americans were experiencing inflation.
But as The Hill columnist Justin Haskins pointed out in an opinion piece on Sunday, the problem is now simply too big to ignore. What’s more, Haskins says, Biden’s biggest nightmare is about to get even worse.
Writing Sunday, Haskins noted the steep rise in the consumer price index (CPI). Compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the CPI measures changes in the price of consumer goods, and it registered a 6.2% jump from October 2020 to October 2021, the columnist said.
That upswing represents the most rapid 12-month price escalation to be recorded in the past three decades. Now, Haskins says, “virtually every aspect of the U.S. economy has been impacted by the inflation.”
Unaffordable, out of reach
“The price of milk has increased 17 percent,” Haskins wrote for The Hill. “Egg prices have risen 42 percent. Energy service prices have increased more than 11 percent.”
The columnist said even these numbers don’t provide a complete sense of just how difficult the situation is becoming, however.
He wrote that “for millions of families, especially those seeking to purchase higher-priced items such as a car or home, inflation is having an even worse impact than the CPI’s topline figures show.”
“For example, Kelley Blue Book reported in October that the average price of a new car has increased by $5,000 since the end of 2020,” Haskins observed in his Sunday op-ed. “A new motor vehicle now costs an average of $45,000 — the highest figure ever recorded.”
High federal spending to blame
Even more troubling is the effect that inflation has on the cost of buying a home, with the average house price rising by nearly $70,000 between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2021.
Haskins said it is “difficult to understate the historic nature of these figures,” as Americans have seen “the third largest year-over-year increase recorded since 1963 and the biggest price jump since 1973, nearly 50 years ago.”
He doesn’t foresee the inflationary crisis ending well, and compared the Biden administration’s massive spending plans to a form of “economic suicide.”
According to Haskins, the only option is “to reverse course” with “a total rejection of the Build Back Better bill now under consideration in Congress.” Are congressional Republicans willing to put up the fight? Only time will tell.
The post Columnist: Bidenflation is leaving its mark on ‘virtually every aspect of the US economy’ first appeared on Conservative Institute.
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