Freedom

By Casey Harper

President Joe Biden is only a few weeks away from the end of his time in office, and one key part of his legacy is undeniable: inflation.

Biden has battled inflation from the start, but critics say he helped fuel it with trillions of dollars in deficit spending during his four years in office. Federal debt spending is offset in part by printing money, which increases inflation.

Biden has boasted bringing inflation rates down from about 9% earlier in his term to roughly 2.5% currently.

While the rate of inflation has slowed, that doesn’t mean prices have decreased. In fact, they continue rising, albeit slower than earlier in his term.

The federal government released a a key inflation marker Friday, its Personal Consumption Expenditure index, which rose 2.4% last month, a bit less than expected.

Overall, though, prices have risen more than 20% since Biden took office.

According to the federal CPI inflation calculator, $100 in January 2021, when Biden took office, has the same buying power as $120 as of November of this year. That means $100 went much further in 2021 than it would today.

The price of groceries actually rose faster than overall inflation, increasing more than 22% since Biden took office.

Those higher prices have given Republicans plenty of fodder for their attacks on the incumbent president.

“The Biden-Harris Administration’s parting gift to the American people is as welcome as a lump of coal at Christmas: higher prices that keep rising,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo., said in a statement Friday. “Families have been hammered by a 20 percent spike in prices under President Biden that has made the cost of living unaffordable. The American people are ready for the Trump presidency and a return to a strong, prosperous economy that created good-paying jobs.”