America's Talking - Fact Check: Biden Touts Inflation Has ‘Fallen'

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

President Joe Biden this week touted what he called a major drop in inflation, saying prices had fallen more than 60%. Those comments come on the heels of more federal data showing prices are on the rise, raising the question: Has inflation really fallen or is something else going on? The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its Consumer Price Index, a key marker of inflation that has spiked recently. BLS found the CPI rose another 0.4% last month, part of a 3.5% increase over the previous twelve months. Soon after that data was released, Biden released a statement boasting of a drop in inflation. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, April 12th. As we inch closer to November's presidential election, the economy remains a top concern for American voters. Just in the past few days, we learned that inflation remains at elevated levels, small business optimism continued to drop,

and gas prices continue to rise as we approach the summer driving season. Joining me to discuss this latest economic news is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, let's start with inflation in the continuing rise in the cost of most every consumer goods and services. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest consumer price index for March on Wednesday, and despite President Joe Biden saying inflation is leveled off, the data show it is not. Yeah, I mean, so more inflation data, more bad news. I mean, that's the short version of this. But to get into some of the details, over the last 12 months, inflation has risen 3.5%. In last month, it rose 0.4%. That's based on the consumer price index. It's one of several metrics, but it is a leading inflation indicator. Now, 3.5%. That is not as bad as what we saw earlier in Biden's term, which is around 9%. But it's still definitely higher. than what economists would like it to be. I mean, ideally an inflation rate would be, you know, two, two and a half percent, I'd say, or unless you want to go ideological and say it should be zero.

But anyway, it's definitely above what economists generally say is a good inflation rate. And on top of that, it's actually rising more quickly than it was a few months ago. So, of course, Dan, you know, we had this crazy inflation. I mean, nine percent overall, but some things like food prices were much higher than that. Of course, you remember gas going over $5 a gallon at one point. And then we sort of came out of that and, you know, Biden, the Biden administration, President Joe Biden sort of spiked the football and said, inflation is done. You know, we beat this. A lot of economists were optimistic that that was the case. But the last two months inflation data has been higher than what many expected and of course what many liked. And it raises a question,

Is inflation actually gone, or are we going to be in for in for round two going into the next year or two? Casey, you actually did a fact check this week on President Joe Biden's comments that inflation is under control. Tell us what you found when you were doing that fact check. Yeah, it was really interesting. After that, you know, not great inflation data came out, President Biden released a statement. And, you know, at the time it was like almost, immediate, like there was a huddle, we need to do something. I mean, they probably get some of this date ahead of time. But he, you know, Biden in this statement touted that inflation has, quote,

fallen more than 60 percent. And that word fall, I mean, there was, you know, he put it on Twitter. There was a little bit of people saying, you know, what Twitter needs to community notes, needs a fact check there. Somebody needs to call him out. Of course, I saw that, you know, after I started working on the story. But it raises the question, has inflation really fallen? can the president say inflation has fallen when it's actually increasing right now? And so I'm talking to the data. And the long and short of it is, I think there's a little bit of what one of my sources, Ryan Young at the Competitive Enterprise Institute called some good old fashion political spin, Dan. I mean, Bill O'Reilly used to have the no spin zone, but I think we

stepped into the spin zone with the story. So you can technically say inflation has fallen because of the data I previously referenced, which is inflation used to rise at this breakneck pace of over 9% annually, right? And so now it's not that inflation has fallen, to be clear. Like, prices have not fallen, is what I should say. Overall prices have risen about 20% since Biden took office, and they're not going down now. They're actually rising more quickly than economists would like, as I say. But they are rising less quickly than when they were at the catastrophic level a couple years ago. Is that clear? Does that make sense? Absolutely. Just the one stat that you just referenced, the fact that prices overall have risen

about 20% in three years, yeah, that has a direct impact on consumers. And even if current inflation, we're at what, you know, at that 2% mark that economists say, they would prefer it to be at, that the previous years of the costs rising under the Biden administration, they haven't come down. They're still coming up. So Americans are still, regardless, feeling that at the grocery store, at the gas stations, et cetera. Exactly. I mean, it'd be like if you were going on the interstate 100 miles an hour and then you slowed down to 87 miles an hour and then you got pulled over and you told the police officer, Sir, no, my speed, I've slowed down. I'm going slow now. So, well, you're still speeding. You're still

over the 70 mile an hour speed limit. Maybe you're not going 100 anymore. And you reference gas prices, Dan, I mean, we can talk about this, but Americans are facing rising gas prices. Again, I referenced going over $5 per gallon earlier in Biden's term. I don't know that we'll get quite that high again, but, you know, prices have risen about a quarter in the last month or so. So, you know, let's say gas prices nationally, you know, it changes daily, but we'll say, you know, You know, around $3.63. It'll be different tomorrow and the next day. But the general trends, $3.63.

According to AAA. And that's up from, you know, about $3.39. Just a month ago, you know, Morgan Stanley is projecting that crude oil prices are going to continue to rise significantly through the summer. Of course, seasonally gas prices do go up in the summer anyway. So I think that we're going to be getting close to approaching a $4 a gallon national average. I don't know if we'll get there, but we're heading that direction, Dan. And Californians are already paying more than $5.40 a gallon of gasoline and still going up there to. The price of gas depends on where you live, what states you live in, where you live in the country.

That has an impact on it. Of course, gas taxes impact the price of gas in various states or whatever. I was looking at AAA's map just yesterday. day in Illinois, which has among the highest gas taxes in the country, is this big red blot in the middle of the country because of its prices are so much higher than its neighbors. So prices are up, whether it's gasoline, food, et cetera, Casey, I know we've done some polling and others have done some polling. How big of an impact is inflation going to have on the November presidential election, in your opinion? Yeah, I mean, in my opinion, for all that that's worth, it's going to be a big issue,

especially because prices are rising again, especially because I think voters largely do blame President Joe Biden. Our Center Square voters' voice poll found that immigration and inflation are two of the most important issues to voters right now. And there are two issues where Biden has really struggled to show competency. And on top of that, we're seeing from the National Federation of independent businesses, that small businesses are less optimistic now than they have been, you know, since 2012, since coming out of the financial crisis. So small businesses are not

optimistic. Americans are very worried about inflation and this latest data shows that they might have a good reason to be concerned. Casey, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com.