Affordability

Editor, Times-Union:
It has been the mantra of the left since Trump started his second term and a fact that the left can’t run from. The “Affordability Crisis” manifested itself from the very beginning of the Biden administration. The first thing the Dems and Biden did when they took over control of the government was declare a “war on fossil fuels.” They shut down construction of the Keystone pipeline, eliminating over 14,000 jobs along with erasing future oil producting from Canada to the Gulf of America. They also stopped future exploration for oil on public property.
The equally devastating move they made was to pass an enormous unnecessary billed the American Rescue Act, which cost taxpayers 1.2 trillion dollars. The bill used approximately 33% of the money to mail $2,000 checks to taxpayers but would spin our country into economic inflation the likes we haven’t seen since Democratic President Jimmy Carter was in office.
Let’s talk about inflation. The most widely used metric for economists to gauge inflation is the CPI (Consumer Price Index), which is an average cost across a multitude of sectors like food, car sales, retail sales and many others. This all goes into the calculation they call the CPI. When the Dems triggered hyper inflation it raised the inflation numbers from 1.4% at the end of Trump’s first term up to 9.2% by the middle of Joe Biden’s term.
Not to get too much into the weeds, it is important to understand that there are different causes of inflation. The first is called “demand-pull” inflation, which simply put is too many dollars chasing too few goods, as we experienced shortly after the $2,000 handouts during the start of Biden’s term. The other cause for inflation is a result of a “cost-pull” environment in which the cost of production increases due to a lack of one or many core influences in the production of fossil fuels. Oil is a part of everything we eat, wear or use. It affects prices for everything and as a result of Biden’s action threw us into hyper-inflation.
The problem with inflation is it is a cumulative number so when prices go up it is very had to bring them down. Inflation went up 22% during Biden’s term so what might cost $100 before he was in office cost $122 after his term. Even under Trump’s second term, inflation has tacked on another 5% to that. So you see that while the Dems clamor about “Affordability” they were the ones that pus us in this position we are now! Why would we allow them anywhere near control of our government knowing what they did? The only way to make life more affordable is by economic growth and lower taxes, both of which Trump and the Republicans have been trying to do for the last 21 months. Clearly, we just can’t afford Democrats.
Gerald Roach
Warsaw