CLAIM: President Joe Biden claimed Wednesday that inflation was “soaring” when he took office.
“Look, we’ve dramatically lowered inflation from 9% to nearly 3%. We’re in a better position, and we’re in a better position than we were when we took office,” Biden said Wednesday at a White House press briefing. “We are in a situation where the inflation rate is rapidly increasing.” meeting.
The president was reacting to the latest report on the consumer price index, which showed that inflation rose at an annualized rate of 4.6% in March, the fourth month in a row that inflation was higher than expected.
Verdict: False.
Inflation was not skyrocketing when Biden took office. When Mr. Biden took his oath of office in January 2021, the consumer price index was up 1.4% year-over-year. The following month, it rose 1.7%.
The personal consumption expenditure price index, which the Fed uses as the basis for its 2% inflation target, rose 1.6% in January 2021 and 1.8% in February.
This clip of Biden’s press conference here is outrageous. Biden claims that inflation was skyrocketing when he took office. https://t.co/Fj5Ghq2R43
— John Carney (Read Tim’s book: Family Unfriends) (@carney) April 11, 2024
Inflation did not exceed the Fed’s target until March 2021. On March 11, 2021, Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, which injects $1.9 trillion in stimulus into the economy. At the time, even Democratic-leaning economists like Larry Summers and Oliver Blanchard warned that pushing this much deficit spending into an economy already recovering from pandemic lockdowns could push inflation higher. He warned her that it was highly sexual.
Since Biden took office, the consumer price index has risen 18.94%, and inflation has averaged more than 6% a year, or three times the Fed’s target. During the same period of Trump’s presidency, inflation rose an average of 5.96% a year, to an average of just under 2% a year.
