By Guy Ciarrocchi

Joe Biden’s Vice President, Kamala Harris, is co-author of the very policies creating the worst inflation since Jimmy Carter. Now, she wants us to believe she finally understands the problem and has the solution. If we will just elect her and wait until 2025, she promises that she’s going to fix her mess.

In her “much anticipated” economic policy speech, Kamala told us how bad inflation is. “A loaf of bread is up 50 percent more…a pound of ground meat costs almost 50 percent more.”

It took her becoming the nominee to acknowledge the problem out loud.

Let’s dismiss the Kamala Harris and Bob Casey silly, nonsensical idea that we have higher prices because corporate America suddenly decided to get greedy in 2022. Even CNN rejected that fallacy and quoted a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

The bigger problem for Kamala — and even bigger for us if she wins — is that her big government, big spending, socialist plan to “fix” inflation is so bad that even Democrat television panelists complained it would do nothing at best and could make things worse.

A Washington Post editorial headline was blunt and to the point. “The times demand serious economic ideas. Harris supplies gimmicks. Harris’ most outlandish plan is her proposal to ban ‘price-gouging;’ but, that’s just one of many misguided ideas.”

Mic drop.

If you’re a Democrat running for President and your major plan to address America’s number one problem is ridiculed and ripped apart by The Washington Post, it might be time for the Democrats to search for presidential candidate number three.

Let us never forget that her policies caused inflation and our suffering.

She was the tie-breaking vote for the nearly $2 trillion so-called “American Rescue Plan,” the third-round of multi-trillion-dollar spending. Covid “emergency” spending alone was bigger than one year’s entire federal budget. Analysts warned them it would cause inflation — too much spending being pumped into the economy too fast and unnecessarily.

She supported paying people not to work through the start of 2022, 21 months after we were told to shut down — two weeks to flatten the curve. She also supported vaccine mandates, causing many to be fired from their jobs. This created a worker shortage and broke the supply chain. Both of these problems caused more inflation.

She happily supports Biden’s policies and rhetoric to “end fossil fuels.” On day one, a 60-day pause in issuing any drilling permits. Ultimately millions of acres of American land has been put off limits to drilling for oil and natural gas, over thirteen million acres in Alaska alone. According to CNN, that put nearly half of Alaska’s petroleum reserve off limits.

That doesn’t even include purposefully rejecting and “slow-rolling” permits to drill, or speeches by Biden and Harris calling for the end of fossil fuels, and Newsom’s ban on the sale of gasoline cars starting in 2035 in California, an economy larger than Italy’s.

For those who were protesting and missed when Economics was taught, if the supply of something is reduced or there is a threat to the future production, the price rises. And when demand increases — for example, the world is coming out of a pandemic and government-imposed lockdowns — you get huge price spikes.

And when you do that to oil and natural gas, it not merely increases the price of gasoline at the pumps, it increases everything we buy at each step of production. Diesel fuel soared even higher which is how everything is transported to the store where we buy it or the FedEx or UPS truck delivering it to our home or business. It also increases the price of food, as fertilizer is made with fossil fuel production by-products.

Throw trillions into the economy. Pay people not to work. Break the supply chain. Force the price of diesel fuel to go much higher, impacting everything multiple times. And increase our dependence on foreign oil from Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela.

Presto — you get inflation. Big time.

First, Biden and Harris told us there was no inflation. Then they told us that it was “transitory.” Then Biden even said it was a necessary cost to help Ukraine fight off Russia.

Harris has been lying to us for so long about so much, she might actually not remember all the lies she’s told.

Eventually, they decided to do something about inflation — spend more money. Again, Harris was the tie-breaking vote to pass the so-called (briefly) “Inflation Reduction Act.”  With an economy choking on wasteful spending, Harris went to the Senate to cast the final vote to pass it — over $800 million in additional, wasteful spending. Before the ink was dry, they admitted it was the largest “green energy” bill in history.

Great. Spends hundreds of millions more. And, penalize fossil fuels. Not exactly the formula to stop, let alone reverse, inflation.

The Washington Post’s criticism reflects the commonsense wisdom of those genuinely concerned about fixing the devastating impact of inflation. Americans are not interested in papering over it, especially when the “fix” will make things worse.

Growing the size and power of the federal government to investigate farmers, grocers, and Wawa isn’t how a serious person brings down inflation.

If the government orders the price of bread to be cut in half, grocers will just start charging more for butter, jelly, or toilet paper. Employees still have to get paid, as do their suppliers, and the banks holding stores’ mortgages.

And bigger, more intrusive government is not how you grow an economy. Otherwise, Floridians would be taking rafts to try to sneak into Cuba or Venezuela.

And more gimmicks to “fix” how expensive it is to buy a home by “giving” people $25,000 to purchase a house.

The government can’t “give” money to anyone, rather it has to tax one group to transfer it to another. Or borrow more money from China, putting us further in debt, and making government more expensive.

This failed policy only makes homes more expensive for everyone and might unintentionally cause people to buy homes they truly cannot afford. We saw that movie before in 2008. Boom.

The problem confronting home ownership is inflation plus mortgage rates as high as eight percent, as opposed to less than three percent when Biden and Harris took office. On a 30-year $200,000 loan, that’s over $1,000 more each month and almost $400,000 more in payments over the life of a loan.

More wasteful programs and giving home buyers $25,000 is not exactly the formula to lower interest rates. In fact, it would increase mortgage rates and make home ownership less affordable.

Kamala Harris has never worked in the private sector since she graduated from law school. Not one day. She has no real-world experience, and it shows.

She lied to us about the inflation she created, just like she did about Biden’s mental and physical health.

When forced to address the issue, her plan is so obviously flawed that her allies at The Washington Post immediately tore it apart with such passion and detail, one would have thought it was a Trump proposal.

“The times demand serious proposals.” And, Harris’s plan is “outlandish.”

Don’t take my word for it. Don’t take Trump’s. Read The Washington Post.

Guy Ciarrocchi is a Senior Fellow with the Commonwealth Foundation. He writes for Broad+Liberty and RealClear Pennsylvania. Follow Guy @PaSuburbsGuy.

This originally appeared at Broad + Liberty on August 22, 2024.

The views expressed here are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Susquehanna Valley Center.

Nothing contained here should be considered as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any legislation.