During an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) slammed Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) for pointing out that Democrats are to blame for record high inflation rates.
Stephanopoulos noted that the 40-year high inflation is costing the average American family about $275 each month before playing a video of Manchin discussing the inflation crisis.
“This is not a time to be throwing more fuel on the fire,” Manchin said in the video. “We have an inflate — we have inflation and we have, basically, an economy that’s on fire. You don’t throw more fuel on the fire that is already on fire causing the problems that we have. So we’ve got to get our house in order.”
Pelosi responded by pointing to the rise in employment under President Biden – even though it is still below pre-pandemic levels – before claiming, “it’s not right — with all the respect in the world for my friend, Joe Manchin — it’s not right to say what we’re doing is contributing to the inflation because it is exactly the opposite.”
The inflation crisis – which began shortly after Biden took office – has led to the highest inflation rates in 40 years, according to new data from the Department of Labor.
“The consumer price index for all items rose 0.6% in January, driving up annual inflation by 7.5%,” CNBC reported. “That marked the biggest gain since February 1982 and was even higher than the Wall Street estimate.”
As noted by CNBC, economists say there is no end to the inflation crisis in sight. CNBC pointed to Andrew Hunter, senior U.S. economist at Capital Economics, who stated that the combination of higher food and housing prices “underlines our view that a rapid cyclical acceleration in inflation is underway and, with labor market conditions exceptionally tight, it is unlikely to abate any time soon.”
“While we still expect more favorable base effects and a partial easing of supply shortages to push core inflation lower this year, this suggests it will remain well above the Fed’s target for some time,” he added.
