Usurper Biden said Tuesday that soaring inflation was “a real tough problem to solve” and warned it could get worse before it gets better — while offering no new ideas to stem rising prices.
“It’s really complicated. I’m not suggesting American people can’t understand it. They understand it, but they have, you know, they’re working eight, 10 hours a day just to put food on the table,” Biden said during an event at the White House-adjacent Old Executive Office Building.
With annual inflation at highs not seen in more than 40 years, Biden declined to predict how long it would take for prices to start coming down — then suggested they may actually rise even higher through 2023.
“I’m not going to predict that,” he told reporters. “It ranges depending on which economists you’re talking to — by the end of this year and some say it’s going to be, it’s going to increase next year. But there’s others who say by the end of this year, you’re gonna see it come down, by the [end of the] calendar year. I don’t know, but I know what we have to do to make sure that we can bring it down.”
Annual inflation hit 8.5% in March — the highest rate since 1981 — after Biden assured the public last year that smaller price hikes were temporary. Tuesday’s event came on the eve of Wednesday’s announcement of April’s Consumer Price Index figure, which economists expect to come in at 8.1%.
Asked about polls showing large majorities blame him for high inflation, Biden said, “All they’re focused on, understandably, is the problem they’re facing.”
“They get a five-and-a-half percent raise, average raise, in their salaries. And yet inflation exceeds that. And they look around the world and they know that a lot of it’s extremely complicated, and so they’re frustrated and I don’t blame them,” Biden said.
The president blamed the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and what he described as greedy oil and meat companies’ price spikes — rather than government spending.
Biden noted that he had allowed gas companies to increase the amount of ethanol in fuel blends this summer to lower prices, but blasted oil companies for not drilling more while “shipping record profits to their investors.” He also touted his proposed legislation to transition to renewable energy sources, but lamented, “You need 60 votes [in the Senate] to get major things done.”