Jan. 6 Hearing Overshadowed by Accelerating Inflation as Housing, Gas, and Food Skyrocket

So much for “transitory” inflation. Not only has the situation not improved over the last few months, but the rate of inflation has started accelerating.

In the month of May, year over year, the consumer price index rose 8.6%, an increased rate over the month of April. The primetime Jan. 6 hearing on Thursday night produced by a former ABC News executive to the exclusive benefit of the Democratic Party probably won’t mean much a week or two from now as Americans continue grappling with increased costs from the gas pump to the grocery store.

CNBC reports on the numbers that came out this morning and it’s quite astonishing that the rate keeps driving upward. This is why in poll after poll, voters feel that the Biden administration still isn’t doing enough to acknowledge inflation, let alone try to correct it:

The consumer price index, a wide-ranging measure of goods and services prices, increased even more than the 8.3% Dow Jones estimate. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core CPI was up 6%, slightly higher than the 5.9% estimate.

On a monthly basis, headline CPI was up 1% while core rose 0.6%, compared to respective estimates of 0.7% and 0.5%.

Surging shelter, gasoline and food prices all contributed to the increase.

Energy prices broadly rose 3.9% from a month ago, bringing the annual gain to 34.6%. Within the category, fuel oil posted a 16.9% monthly gain, pushing the 12-month surge to 106.7%.

Shelter costs, which account for about a one-third weighting on the CPI, rose 0.6% for the month, the fastest one-month gain since March 2004. The 5.5% 12-month gain is the most since February 1991.

Finally, food costs climbed another 1.2% in May, bringing the year-over-year gain to 10.1%.

When asked to comment on the inflation numbers, President Biden remarked on his newfound discovery that bi-racial couples can now sell products on television:

In all seriousness, though, Biden’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel this week was a garbled trainwreck of nonsense.

Back to inflation, what is the Biden economic doctrine to address the problem? Back in 1981, the Reagan plan involved opening up the supply side and allowing capital and products to flow more freely, flooding the market and easing demand. In turn, inflation started backing down due to re-balancing the basics of supply and demand.

In Biden’s case, there seems to be no concept of how to address inflation or even understand how and why it happened. Some inflationary rise was due to increased demand following the emergence of society after the darkest days of Covid-19. The other part has been due to government spending, and Biden’s spending bills specifically in early 2021.

Biden has another answer for everything. Just put Republicans in jail:

Trainwreck. Absolute trainwreck. With a slew of ongoing issues, including continued record inflation, Biden appears on an entertainment program to try and smooth things over. Where did this idea come from? Someone should probably be fired for letting him speak out there off the cuff in a cringeworthy and awkward interview with Kimmel.

It’s a level of tone-deaf that hasn’t been seen, perhaps, since the Carter administration, or perhaps even the George H. W. Bush administration. The President is so insulated from reality, grasping at menial things around the edges and ignoring the big problems facing the country on a daily basis.

Americans need leadership, and there’s none to be found in the White House.

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Nate Ashworth

The Founder and Editor-In-Chief of Election Central. He's been blogging elections and politics for over a decade. He started covering the 2008 Presidential Election which turned into a full-time political blog in 2012 and 2016 that continues today.

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