BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey and other Democrats have used a platform focused on the word “greedflation” to shift the blame for rising prices to companies “price manipulation,” but their claims have no bearing on reality.
Casey’s Recent Ads The video, titled “Shrinky Dink,” shows masked men in suits sneaking into a grocery store in the middle of the night and rearranging items into smaller packages.
“They hope you don’t notice,” Casey says in the ad, referring to a phenomenon Democrats call “shrinkflation.” “CEOs sneakily shrink your favorite brands and charge more for less — the same packaging, the smaller box, the familiar logo, less quantity.”
According to researchers at Keystone Renewal PAC, Casey has spent more than $10.86 million on media advertising since March. Of that total, about $7.55 million, or about 70%, has been spent on inflation, one of the top concerns of battleground state voters.
While Republican messaging has been quick to blame rising prices on President Biden and Democrats’ excessive government spending, Casey has touted his own proposals to crack down on companies that allegedly cause commodity prices to rise.
“My plan would give the Federal Trade Commission the power to punish companies for price gouging,” Casey continues on “Shrinky-Dink,” “and roll back their huge tax cuts, putting more money where it belongs: in your pocket.”
There’s just one problem with this approach: the Fed says it’s simply not true.
May Survey A report released by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that the spike in inflation is better explained by “the combined effects of supply chain disruptions and reduced labor supply during the post-pandemic recovery, which occurred just as consumer demand was rising.”
The Fed says the easing of inflation, often cited by Biden and his allies, is due to the recovery of post-COVID supply chains, a wave of immigration that has increased the supply of workers and dented borrowing demand amid high interest rates.
“Data on the current economic recovery suggest that increases in corporate profits have not been particularly pronounced relative to past recoveries,” the study said, “and markups have not had much of an impact on slowing inflation since the summer of 2022.”
Even the New York Times I fact-checked the president.The paper called Biden’s claim that “the inflation rate was 9% when I took office, but has now fallen to about 3%” “false.” When Biden took office in January 2012, the year-on-year inflation rate was 1.4%, but it will reach a peak of 9.1% in June 2022.
