Overall consumer prices since President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office have increased more than 19 percent since the beginning of 2021 according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but weekly earnings never caught up, only growing 17 percent in that time.
Inflation has averaged more than 5.6 percent a year under Biden-Harris.
The data comes as there is just a month to go in the presidential election between Harris and former President Donald Trump, who has argued on the campaign trail that during his administration, the American people were better off financially. He’s right.
From 2017 to Jan. 2021, weekly earnings were up 16.3 percent, far outpacing four years’ worth of price increases at 7.7 percent, when inflation averaged 1.9 percent a year.
And thanks to high inflation, interest rates are up 70 percent, leading to massive increases in monthly mortgage payments, and generally higher interest rates, leading to big increases in monthly consumer credit payments as Americans became increasingly taxed in the Biden-Harris economy.
That’s a stark contrast, and one that Americans will continue to see when they simply compare their bills from now to when Trump was in office, with the economy and prices continuing to top the charts in terms of the most important issue this election cycle.
In the past, the combination of inflation outpacing incomes even for temporary moments in administrations has hurt incumbent political parties, including Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, who all lost their bids to stay in the White House in 1976, 1980 and 1992. They also experienced recessions, while today we question whether the so-called soft landing has been achieved.
Whether academics at the Bureau for Economic Research ultimately book the current period as a recession or not, or just a slowdown, the American people felt the pain in their pocketbooks, and as such public perception over the state of the economy will matter even more.
With the latest Quinnipiac swing state poll take Sept. 18 showing that Trump still has a big lead on who would handle the economy better: 49 percent to 46 percent in Pennsylvania, 53 percent to 45 percent in Michigan and 53 percent to 44 percent in Wisconsin, as the American people consider what is most important to them, Trump appears to have an advantage in the race.
In October, the presidential race will come down to closing arguments, and who’s got a better one? Continue four more years of what was seen under Biden-Harris, or is it time for a change by going back to Trump? As usual, stay tuned.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
