The Patriot Post® · Circling the Wagons Over Bidenflation

How do we know Democrats are about to pay the political piper for fueling rampant inflation? Because numerous Leftmedia organs are banging the drum that it’s actually all Republicans’ fault and they’ll make it worse if they win.

First, in a column titled “Don’t blame Joe Biden for high inflation,” Steven Greenhouse warns, “For any American who is thinking of voting Republican out of anger about inflation, here’s some advice: look before you leap.” He proceeds to explain why he thinks Biden had little or nothing to do with inflation (it’s all the pandemic and Vladimir Putin’s fault!), while Republican plans will further raise prices.

Barack Obama says Republicans don’t have any plans. So which is it?

Greenhouse thinks that making permanent the Republican tax cuts signed into law by Donald Trump will somehow only help “the rich and big corporations.” He thinks that Biden’s price controls on healthcare “will reduce inflation for nearly 63 million Americans on Medicare,” and therefore repealing them will hurt. He claims that repealing ObamaCare “would push up healthcare prices for many Americans.” He argues that overturning Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan “will make it harder for millions of young Americans to deal with inflation.”

Wrong. The Republican tax cuts benefited every tax bracket and tens of millions of Americans across the economic spectrum. ObamaCare pushed up healthcare prices. Price controls put upward pressure on prices in other areas. Subsidizing some college grads at the expense of other people will raise the price of college tuition even further.

Greenhouse parrots Biden’s line about “corporate greed” too. From oil companies to other businesses, he argues that “roughly 40%” of inflation “can be attributed to fatter corporate profit margins.” Bernie Sanders claims it’s 54%.

As for oil companies, the Wall Street Journal editorial board corrects the record. “Keep in mind that oil majors’ current profits follow steep losses in the pandemic,” the editors write. “As oil prices plunged amid lockdowns, companies and OPEC nations pared investment and shut in wells. Demand for oil then bounced back much quicker than supply, which has driven up prices — and profits. That’s Econ 101.”

Nevertheless, there’s Joe Biden out there again yesterday threatening to punish oil and gas companies for engaging in capitalism. “Their profits are a windfall of war,” Biden asserted. “At a time of war, any company receiving historic windfall profits like this has a responsibility to act beyond the narrow self-interest of its executives and shareholders.” If they don’t bow to his wishes, “they’re going to pay a higher tax on their excess profits and face other restrictions.” Other restrictions? Like all the actions he’s taken since Day One in the Oval Office to make energy production harder and more expensive?

Earlier last month, Biden lectured the oil companies, “You should be using these record-breaking profits to increase production and refining.” For all his bloviating about our climate “emergency,” it’s awfully odd to hear him arguing for more oil production from companies he wants to put out of business. And it’s flat-out bizarre to think that punitive taxes on “windfall profits” (otherwise known as unconstitutional bills of attainder) will help consumers.

Meanwhile, there’s a very concerning impending diesel shortage, and let’s just say it isn’t Putin’s fault.

Elsewhere in the media, The New York Times is griping about Republican plans. “Few economists on either end of the ideological spectrum expect the party’s proposals to meaningfully reduce inflation in the short term,” the Times says. “Instead, many say some of what Republicans are proposing — including tax cuts for high earners and businesses — could actually make price pressures worse by pumping more money into the economy.”

Let’s translate: Proposals won’t “meaningfully reduce inflation” because Biden will still be president and Republicans won’t be able to really enact an agenda at all until January 2025. It’s not “tax cuts” to avoid raising taxes, instead keeping rates where they currently are. “Pumping more money into the economy” is a strange euphemism for not confiscating money through higher taxes in the first place. And these journalists clowns wonder why Americans don’t trust the media.

The Chicago Sun-Times editorial board blames — who else? — Donald Trump for inflation. “As right-wing politicians around the country holler about inflation, they conveniently ignore the long-term impact of former President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts,” the sages of economic wisdom write. “Trump’s cuts, geared to help the wealthy, bloated the federal budget deficit, which left the government less leeway when it needed it to rescue the economy from COVID-19.”

The Republican cuts were only “geared” toward anyone in the sense that income tax rates were cut for people who pay income taxes. If half the population doesn’t pay income taxes, their 0% effective rate is pretty hard to cut. Even so, those tax cuts fueled a roaring economy, increased federal revenue as a result (contrary to the Sun-Times editors’ false assertion), and provided the only cushion that kept our nation out of depression when the pandemic hit. Imagine if COVID had come during Obama’s sluggish economy.

This November, voters have a choice: Believe the Democrats who have steered the economy into its present ditch and the lying media lackeys who defend that record against all evidence, or try something different by voting for the Republicans who have made a pretty decent Commitment to America.