{"id":1543801,"date":"2022-07-08T06:19:58","date_gmt":"2022-07-08T10:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1543801"},"modified":"2022-07-08T06:20:04","modified_gmt":"2022-07-08T10:20:04","slug":"progressive-aides-push-biden-to-bring-back-transitory-inflation-narrative","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/progressive-aides-push-biden-to-bring-back-transitory-inflation-narrative\/","title":{"rendered":"Progressive Aides Push Biden to Bring Back &#8220;Transitory Inflation&#8221; Narrative"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fprogressive-aides-push-biden-to-bring-back-transitory-inflation-narrative%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1543801&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Yet another day at Politico, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2022\/07\/07\/bidens-laser-focus-on-inflation-rankles-progressives-inside-administration-00044365\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">yet another report<\/a> of a crisis-of-confidence escalation on the Left. Today\u2019s a bit different, though. This time the calls are coming from inside the house, Ben White reports \u2014 the White House. Progressives in the administration have begun telling reporters how badly Joe Biden has bungled the messaging on inflation, although not in the way you\u2019d think:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Runaway inflation is crushing President Joe Biden\u2019s approval ratings and threatens to swamp Democrats in the midterm elections.<\/p>\n<p>But many progressives \u2014 including some within the administration itself \u2014 say Biden\u2019s all-out messaging war against spiking prices is making matters even worse.<\/p>\n<p>They fear that the administration\u2019s unswerving support for the Federal Reserve\u2019s campaign to choke off inflation will slam the brakes on the economy and undercut the few things the White House has moving in its favor. Among them: a strong labor market, solid wage gains and ambitious spending proposals in areas like child care and prescription drug costs that are popular with voters.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u201cSolid wage gains\u201d? Biden hasn\u2019t achieved\u00a0<em>any \u201c<\/em>solid\u201d wage gains, thanks to the inflationary wave that his American Rescue Plan touched off in April 2021. Since then, the Consumer Price Index year-on-year inflation rate has consistently registered above 5% and has been in the 8% range for the last four months:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>In comparison, wages have grown at the annualized level of 5% <em>at best<\/em> over the past year, figures which do not include the impact of inflation. The difference between the two shows that Americans have been watching their buying power erode steadily during the entire Biden presidency. The data from April 2022, for instance, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxbusiness.com\/money\/inflation-erode-american-wages-april-2022\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">showed a 2.6% decline in real inflation-adjusted wages<\/a> over the previous year, and we saw similar results in May. June is likely to be no exception.<\/p>\n<p>The strong labor market existed before Biden showed up, too, and still isn\u2019t\u00a0<em>quite<\/em> as strong as advertised. We are still recovering jobs from the 2020 pandemic shutdown \u2014 about 900K below the February 2020 employment level in a static sense, and about 3 million or so jobs short of where we should be dynamically. Biden\u2019s running around talking about how Donald Trump lost the most jobs ever on his watch, but Trump added most of them back before Biden took office, too \u2014 12.5 million of the 22 million or so lost had already been recovered in just ten months. We\u2019ve added another 8.5 million in the 17 months since Biden took office.<\/p>\n<p>Biden\u2019s actually making\u00a0<em>that<\/em> argument for the benefit of progressives, as well as math illiterates and those with memory issues. On inflation, though, progressives inside and outside of the administration want to keep making the argument that it\u2019s merely \u201ctransitory\u201d:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Many progressives believe inflation is likely to ease on its own without severe rate hikes; more moderate voices say the only path to improving Democrats\u2019 political fortunes is to bring prices down swiftly.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s an excruciating spot for the White House. Polls show inflation is a top concern to voters, so attacking it head-on seems like the smartest political move. Powell and many economists argue that the economy won\u2019t work for anyone if inflation \u2014 now at its highest point since Volcker\u2019s day \u2014 isn\u2019t reversed quickly.<\/p>\n<p>But progressives worry that Biden is abandoning the liberal vision of government\u2019s role in countering decades of growing income inequality, further assisting women and people of color in making progress in the labor market, and transforming the nation\u2019s infrastructure into one that relies on clean energy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Biden and his team tried the \u201ctransitory\u201d argument in the summer of 2021. How did that work out? (See chart above.) Progressives and the White House tried arguing as late as early spring of this year that inflation had \u201cpeaked.\u201d How did that work out? (See chart above.) And now progressives want to keep making the argument that inflation will just disappear on its own?<\/p>\n<p>Indeed they do, because they fear that Biden will eventually stumble over the one solution to it at hand: American energy production in oil and natural gas. Progressives pushed Biden into a back-door Green New Deal policy in the 2020 election cycle, which Biden implemented on Day One with EO 13990 and continues to pursue. Rapid gasoline and diesel price increases are driving inflation far higher than it needs to be, which is why the Fed now feels an urgent need to intervene. If Biden reversed his energy policy to account for a long-term contribution of oil and natural gas, it would not only improve prospects for fixing the supply crisis on fuel of all sorts but also improve the strategic position of the US against Russia and Iran. Otherwise, the only way to pull down gas prices is to induce a recession-caused decline in energy demand \u2014 which is exactly the path Biden is treading at the moment.<\/p>\n<p>Politically speaking, this is even dumber than it looks. In every poll, voters are far more worried about inflation, gas prices, grocery shortages, and crime than they are about \u201cincome inequality,\u201d climate change, and ethno-racial policies. Let\u2019s use Monmouth <a href=\"https:\/\/hotair.com\/ed-morrissey\/2022\/07\/05\/nbc-dems-midterm-strategy-let-republicans-bail-out-biden-n480672\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">again<\/a> to underscore that point, although <a href=\"https:\/\/hotair.com\/ed-morrissey\/2022\/07\/05\/harvard-harris-poll-six-in-ten-americans-doubt-bidens-mental-fitness-n480647\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the Harvard-Harris poll<\/a> was just as clear:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Biggest concern via Monmouth poll:<\/p>\n<p>33% inflation<br \/>15% gas prices<br \/>9% economy<br \/>6% bills\/groceries<br \/>5% abortion<br \/>3% guns<br \/>3% health care<br \/>3% unemployment<br \/>2% tuition costs<br \/>2% housing\/rent<br \/>2% safety\/crime<br \/>1% civil rights<br \/>1% climate change<br \/>1% coronavirus<br \/>1% education<br \/>1% illness<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ryanstruyk\/status\/1544339824974254081?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">July 5, 2022<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>There\u2019s been plenty of naked attacks on Biden in the media from the Left over the last couple of weeks, and most of them have been justified. These gripes from progressives in and out of the White House are all but delusional. The only thing going away in the next few months if this administration doesn\u2019t meaningfully address inflation is Democrat control in Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yet another day at Politico, yet another report of a crisis-of-confidence escalation on the Left. Today\u2019s a bit different, though. This time the calls are coming from inside the house,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1547086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1543801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1543801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1543801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1547086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1543801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1543801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1543801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}