Your Economy (No Politics)

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Biden Doubles Down on Incorrect Inflation Claims

By Sandy Fitzgerald | Thursday, 09 May 2024 10:22 AM EDT

President Joe Biden, still insisting that he is turning the economy around, repeated claims Wednesday that inflation "was 9% when I came to office," but federal reports show otherwise.

"No president has had the run we've had in terms of creating jobs and bringing down inflation," Biden told CNN's Erin Burnett. "It was 9% when I came to office."

But The New York Post noted that inflation was at 1.4% when Biden took office in January 2021.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics records, overall inflation was at 1.4% in January 2021. It climbed to 4.2% in just a few months in April 2021, then reached 9.1%, a 40-year high, by June 2022.

Meanwhile, inflation as of March was at 3.5%, 2.1 percentage points higher than it was when Biden was sworn in.

The president made similar claims in April after the BLS March reports were released, blaming former President Donald Trump for the rapid climb in prices and claiming that his administration "dramatically reduced inflation from 9% down to close to 3%."

"We're better situated than where we were when we took office, where inflation was skyrocketing," Biden said then.

Biden also defended his policies after Burnett pressed him on polls showing that voters trust Trump more on the economy.

He responded that he has already "turned around" the economy, even though interest rates and inflation remain high.

Biden's critics say massive spending bills passed in his first year of office fueled inflation.

According to BLS data, the average prices of goods and services have increased 19% in the past four years. Prices increased by 8% during Trump's four years in office.

Burnett reminded Biden that home prices have doubled from before the pandemic and consumer confidence is near a two-year low. But Biden insisted that polling data has been "wrong all along."

"Look at the [University of] Michigan survey — 65% of the American people think they're in good shape economically," he said. "They think the nation is not in good shape. They're personally [in] good shape."

Biden also blamed high inflation on "shrinkflation" and "corporate greed," where before he blamed it on COVID-19 supply chains and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"The fact is that if you take a look at what the people have, they have the money to spend; it angers them and angers me that you have to spend more," Biden said. "For example, the whole idea of this notion Sen. [Bob] Casey [of Pennsylvania] talked about, shrink inflation. For example, Snickers bars, they did a thing, and it's like 20% less for the same price. That's corporate greed. And we've got to deal with it."

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/joe-biden-inflation-economy/2024/05/09/id/1164063/?ns_mail_uid=110c4f27-b39e-4490-8c9e-becd156886f8&ns_mail_job=DM620157_05092024&s=acs&dkt_nbr=010102u0akor