FACT CHECK: Pelosi Claims Massive Democrat Spending ‘is Not Inflationary’ 

Claim: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) claimed that the Democrats’ massive spending bills and proposed to Build Back Better bill “does not increase inflation.”

Verdict: Mostly False

During a press conference, Pelosi claimed the Democrats’ massive spending bills are “non-inflationary because of the way it is written.”

Let’s congratulate Nancy Pelosi for her 100,000th lie while in office. She celebrates it with this whopper…https://t.co/JcvI4pWb0K pic.twitter.com/FYUUB8euBt

— Mike Garcia (@ElectMikeGarcia) March 14, 2022

“One other point that we’ll make about it is that what we are doing in our legislation, what we would do in the Build Back Better – seventeen Nobel laureates in economics said that legislation does not increase inflation,” Pelosi said. “It is non-inflationary because of the way it is written.”

She went on to dismiss critics who blame government spending for increased inflation before claiming that their spending bills are “reducing the national debt.”

“So when we’re having this discussion, it’s important to dispel some of those who say, well it’s the government spending – no, it isn’t,” Pelosi said. “The government spending is doing the exact reverse, reducing the national debt. It is not inflationary.”

At one point, Pelosi claimed global inflation “starts with” Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We’re paying very close attention to it, but this starts with Putin because the global inflation for reasons beyond the gas price,” she said. “Global inflation is something that we have to deal with globally, but we have our responsibility to deal with it at home, and we have legislation that does just that, by increasing supply and, way that is not adding to inflation.”

Between January 2021 and January 2022, consumer prices increased by 7.5 percent, according to the Consumer Price Index. This percentage is expected to increase to 7.9 percent when the Department of Labor releases the numbers for February this Thursday.

Although Pelosi feels she is not to blame, many economists have called out the Democrats’ massive spending packages as the primary reason for increased inflation rates.

Even former President Barack Obama’s former lead adviser on the Auto Task Force blames President Joe Biden for inflation. “This is Biden’s inflation, and he needs to own it,” tweeted Steve Rattner.

Well, no. These are Feb #’s and only include small Russia effect. This is Biden’s inflation and he needs to own it. https://t.co/WsJjn6picV

— Steven Rattner (@SteveRattner) March 10, 2022

Obama’s former National Economic Council director Larry Summers said, “some of the predictions that I made about the consequences of stimulus do seem to have come true.”

Inflation rates began to increase dramatically during March 2021 after Congress passed Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.

As Breitbart News’s Economics Editor John Carney wrote:

Inflation only began to accelerate last March after years of coming in below the Fed’s two percent target. The Fed had decided to keep interest rates low although the economy was recovering at a faster than expected rate. What’s more, the Biden administration pushed through billions of dollars of deficit spending in the American Rescue Plan. These combined to fuel demand for goods and services faster than supplies could expand, pushing up prices.

Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell, following the advice of many of the economists on the central bank’s staff, initially claimed that inflation was due to transitory factors. Fed officials forecast that inflation would fall in the latter half of 2021, predicting that supply chains would swiftly unsnarl and a rebalancing of consumer demand from goods to services would relieve pricing pressure. The Biden administration, under the tutelage of former Fed chair and now Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, largely followed suit and continued to press for even more spending.

Pelosi is not the only out-of-touch Democrat ignoring the role massive government spending plays in increased inflation rates.

A recent fact check by Breitbart News’s Jacob Bliss found Rep. Cindy Axne’s (D-IA) claim that increased government spending is not the cause of rising inflation as “mostly false.”

Additionally, Biden refuses to own up to his role in inflation, shifting the blame to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Biden now refers to inflation as “Putin’s price hike.”