Welcome to From Insults to Respect. Today, I would like to discuss a topic that has been bothering me for several months–politicians and their followers attacking President Biden for inflation.

Consider a press conference held by Senate Republicans this past July. At that time, they blamed the “insane tax and spending spree of President Biden and the Democrats for six straight months of raging inflation.”

As another example, on 3/10/22 I read this tweet by Florida Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan:

“Inflation just rose to 7.9% – another 40-year high! First they said it was ‘transitory,’ then they blamed supply chain issues, then they claimed inflation ‘is actually a good sign.’ And now it’s Putin’s fault. When will the WH admit they are to blame for #Bidenflation?”

In my research on this topic, I found there is far more nuance that was unfairly left out of the Republican press conference statement, this tweet, and other comments seeking to blame Biden. I’ll provide much of that nuance below. But first, to provide the reader with a sense of why this blaming upsets me, I’m going to share two brief personal stories that illustrate my values when it comes to blaming people.

My Two Stories

Story 1: Last summer I was in the mood to play a round of golf, so I checked the weather report. Seeing there was only a twenty percent chance of rain, I called three of my friends to see if they wanted to join me, informing them of the most recent weather report. They agreed to play.

Unfortunately, just as we stepped up to the first tee, it began to pour. A check on a weather map indicated it was going to pour for a good hour or two, so we decided to head home.

Feeling responsible for getting this group of guys to show up to play, I apologized. Each of my friends made it clear they were not blaming me, saying things like, “It’s not your fault, Jeff.” I very much appreciated and respected those words of support, especially because I know individuals who are quick to blame.

Story 2: One day I was with three friends on the way to a baseball game. The guy that was driving said he knew the way to the ball field, so the rest of us sat back, chatting about old times until we noticed it was getting pretty close to game time.

“How come we’re not there yet,” I enquired, at which point the driver admitted he was lost. We put our heads together, and finally got to the game, but only after the second inning. Obviously, the driver was largely responsible for our being late, although any one of us could have double checked the directions, rather than just assume the driver was not mistaken. In any case, after a few good natured teasing comments, all of us hastened to be supportive of our driver friend, saying things like, “Hey, everyone makes mistakes,” and then sharing incidents in which we were late because we had gotten lost in the past. I respect how we handled the situation.

Researching the Real Causes for the Current Inflation Problems

Dismayed at the blaming of Biden, whom I do believe is trying to do his best during terribly tough circumstances, I did some research on the causes of the current inflation situation. Checking multiple sources, which are readily available for anyone really interested in this issue, this is what I found.

Supply Chain Issues: By all accounts that I can find, shortly after the pandemic struck, and before Biden was sworn in as president, the annual inflation rate for most American purchases had already risen to the highest level in a decade.

Moreover, rising inflation isn’t just hitting the US. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, inflation among its 38 member states is heading higher. As Greg Rosalsky of NPR put it,

“Countries, big and small, conservative-led and progressive-led, are grappling with surging consumer prices as global demand outstrips supply. It’s one big global inflation-fest, and no single leader seems to have the power to stop it.”

The pandemic has disrupted every aspect of the global supply chain, from manufacturing and transportation to logistics, at a time when the pandemic has also sparked a buying spree. The problem is partly due to a decades-old business strategy that aims to keep inventories lean. While factories were on lockdown or navigating Covid-19 restrictions, raw materials were harder to get because of the sudden swell in demand. Shortages of just about everything cropped up, especially workers to unload goods and drive them to their destination. Very simply, the basic principle of economics that states, “when demand out paces supply, prices rise,” is currently in overdrive.

Lack Of Real Competition: About two-thirds of the largest publicly traded US companies reported fatter profit margins in the first nine months of 2021 compared with the same period in 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal. As costs for raw materials, labor, and transportation have increased in response to the pandemic, a lot of big corporations are not only offsetting those costs by raising prices on consumers, they are raising prices even higher, taking advantage of the pressing needs of consumers under pandemic conditions. These corporations can get away with this because Republicans have supported a lax antitrust enforcement policy that has put the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few giants.

Challenging Problem for the Feds: The department in the Federal Government that has the responsibility to guide the US through troubled waters is the Federal Reserve System. Among its most central roles is to promote the effective operation of the U.S. economy and, more generally, the public interest. It conducts the nation’s monetary policy to promote maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates in the U.S. economy.

Jerome Powell, with impressive credentials, is the chair person of this system. Nominated for the position by former President Donald Trump in 2018, he was confirmed by Democrat and Republican Senators by an 84 to 13 vote. He is still serving in that position under President Biden.

So, the US government has had throughout the pandemic some of the greatest expertise in the country to guide our economic system. Despite this, neither they, nor experts in other countries throughout the world, have been able to prevent inflation woes.

Some Responsibility of the President? Now, my research did find that there are some moves that a president can make that just might have some rather minor effects on inflation. For example, there is a theory that government spending that leads to a larger national debt can be inflationary. But the evidence for this relationship is far from clear. For example, for the five years before the Covid pandemic the national debt was around 20 trillion dollars, while inflation was humming along at a comfortable and sustainable 2 percent. The last time the US had a serious inflation problem began in the mid-1970s and ran through the mid-1980s. It threw the country into a recession and unemployment rose to over 10 percent. The national debt at that time was less than 1 trillion dollars. At least with the current bout with inflation, unemployment is currently below 4 precent.

With regards to spending money that raised the national debt, here are the facts. It is true that Biden signed into law a nearly two trillion dollar Covid relief bill at the beginning of his term over the objections of Republicans. This did indeed add to the national debt. But a fair minded person, it seems to me, would note that former Republican President Trump advocated policies that raised the debt significantly more than Biden. First, his tax cut that wasn’t matched with any spending cuts led to a trillion dollar increase in the national debt the following year, as was predicted by all of the major economists. Then came the pandemic during his administration and he quickly signed into law a $2.2 trillion relief package, followed by a $900 billion relief package. When we combine the increase in debt from Trump’s tax program with his pandemic relief spending, we come up with over 4 trillion dollars. All of this money sloshed into the economy before Biden took the oath of office.

During Biden’s presidency, he signed into law two other big spending bills, the first designed to improve infrastructure. The second, the Omnibus bill, is designed to keep the government open and also included aid for Ukraine. These bills were clearly bipartisan, passing the Senate 69-30 for the first, and 68-31 for the second.

If not Blame, How Better to Move Forward?

It seems to me, the extra money Congress approved to deal with the pandemic and signed into law first by Trump and then Biden was a good faith effort to prevent seriously worse outcomes if nothing was done. Rather than blaming either Trump or Biden for the mess, a mess much of the whole world is facing, the responsible thing to do going forward is to focus on what can be done to weather this period of rising prices. Biden has been responsibly doing just that.

His proposal, as expressed during his State of the Union Address, involves capping the cost of insulin to $35 a month and letting Medicare negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs. Child care cost, that has been weighing heavily on families, would be cut in half for most families. This would help parents, including millions of women, who left the workforce during the pandemic because they couldn’t afford child care, to be able to get back to work. The enhanced Child Tax Credit, which was beefed up for 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, would be extended.

Concluding Remarks

Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional and social intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

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