By Rep. Joe Wilson
October 28, 2021
I have long been focused on the state of our economy and how it affects our families, including several speeches made in recent weeks on the floor of Congress, and visits to small businesses. Unfortunately, the current status of the country is in particularly bad shape, directly affecting our pocketbooks and destroying jobs.
This is not only a financial problem, but an emotional one. We all feel for those who are suffering in this most challenging time.
As Tim Murtaugh, a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation, so aptly summarized in an October 18 story, “President Joe Biden is drowning in a sea of crises of his own creation, and Americans are the ones who are paying the price.”
These ‘crises’ he refers to affect us all, particularly families, and it comes as a direct result of the bad decisions – or indecisions – of those who are in the ‘leadership’ positions of our country, i.e., Biden and the Democrats in Congress.
In reference to the 2,465 page, $3.5 TRILLION spending bill currently being pushed by Biden, Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, said in a September 29 statement, “…spending trillions more on new and expanded
government programs…is the definition of fiscal insanity.”
That figure is so astronomical that it’s in a dream world, but yet if the Democrats have their way, it will, in reality, be a nightmare.
With the President repeatedly reading the teleprompter that spending trillions “costs zero dollars,” it is revealing that leadership thinks it is smarter than fellow Democrats, who they belittle as ignorant.
According to the Department of Labor, inflation has continued to skyrocket – and yet Biden and the Democrats want to spend more.
Things are bad and getting worse. In September, the consumer price index, an indication of the prices paid by urban consumers over time for goods and services, accelerated at the fastest pace in 13 years.
A recent study estimates that the inflation crisis is on average costing families an additional $175 a month. Further, data suggests that with higher costs, a family making just under the median income of $58,000 a year will have to
borrow money just to make ends meet.
Inflation is taxation, and it has gone up every month of Biden’s presidency. What this means in real terms to all of us is that prices are up over last year for many everyday products and services.
Here are some examples:
- Gasoline is up 42.1%
- Gas utilities are up 20.6%
- Bacon is up 19.3%
- Eggs are up 12.6%
- Children’s shoes are up 11.9%
- Seafood is up 10.7%
- Women’s dresses are up 9.5%
- Electricity is up 5.2%
Making matters worse (if possible), is that this bill encourages people not to work.
James Freeman of The Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial on October 19 about how Americans should not be complacent living with less, as jobs are destroyed while inflation accelerates.
In it, he says, “Selling the Joe Biden-Bernie Sanders era of scarcity won’t be easy. And it’s going to get much harder if the President and [Sanders] enact their massive new plan to discourage productive labor.”
“Examining the House version of the plan, economist Casey Mulligan estimates that by reducing the incentives to work, the bill’s planned expansions of federal benefits will cost nine million jobs.”
Unfortunately, as tough as higher prices are and will be, the White House still doesn’t understand the impact this inflation will have on millions of Americans.
In May, 2021, talking to reporters, White House economic advisor Cecilia Rouse said, “People view the current spike in inflation in the United States as a transitory phenomenon.”
Then in October, the President’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, said “We all understand the American people are not looking at cost-to-cost comparisons from this year to two years ago.”
And on October 13, the White House Chief of Staff Ronald Klain retweeted a Harvard professor’s comment that, “Most of the economic problems we’re facing (inflation, supply chains, etc.) are high-class problems.”
Coming back to the aforementioned commentary of Tim Murtaugh, referring to Klain’s tweet, “Such a callous dismissal of real-world issues… simply feeds the prevailing belief that Biden simply is bad at his job.”
Joe Wilson is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives serving South
Carolina’s 2nd District
