I first raised the looming threat of inflation nationwide back in January  (“Democrats need to start thinking small,” Jan. 16). At the time, I noted that Democrats – who have the White House and a majority of both the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate – seemed to have no plans whatsoever to fight inflation. Maine Democrats didn’t seem to have any idea to fight inflation, either, but they can be given a bit of a pass on that one; inflation is a national and a global problem, like immigration, that can’t really be addressed at the state level.

While state-level politicians – from both parties, in various states – can slap a sticker on anything that claims it reduces inflation, there’s really nothing they can do about it. They even managed to brand the handing out of money as reducing inflation, somehow, which is more like firefighters pouring gasoline on a burning house. Surely, though, federal legislators, with their ability to either indirectly influence or directly control vast amounts of the national economy, had an actual idea to address this.

It turns out that no, they don’t. They don’t at all. In fact, the best idea they have is to simply spend a whole lot more money on a lot of things, slip the words “Inflation Reduction” into it, and declare that they’ve solved the problem. Let me ask you, since Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act on a party-line vote, has the price of things gone down overall for you? I know that the only thing I’ve noticed going down in price since then is gas.

While that’s certainly a big expense for all of us, it didn’t get anywhere near pre-pandemic levels. Just recently, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided to cut back on production yet again, and now it’s going right back up again, despite Joe Biden’s utterly useless entreaties to Saudi Arabia. Yes, I know you’re all surprised: it turns out that Biden’s big state visit to Saudi Arabia, which was a backtrack on his campaign promises to punish them for the murder of American journalist Jamal Khashoggi, was a complete waste of time. Instead, the Saudis decided to collaborate with Russia to raise oil prices, showing that OPEC cared not a whit about Biden’s trip, the invasion of Ukraine, or currying favor with the West. While that’s sad, none of it should be a surprise.

To be clear, it’s hard to be particularly mad with OPEC, or the Saudis, or with Russia about any of this. It’s their job to do what’s best for their economies, not what’s best for Democrats running for re-election. If Biden wants the Saudis to cozy up to the United States, he needs to make it worth their while, and so far he’s done just about nothing in that regard – coincidentally, just about the same he’s done to fight inflation back at home.

Spending more money doesn’t really do much to fight inflation, just as big, fancy state trips where you pretend to genuflect don’t really do much to improve international relations. In both cases, Biden could have done a whole lot more by doing a whole lot less. If he wanted to really fight inflation, he could have stopped spending a lot more money – for instance, by holding off on his unnecessary stimulus package that he passed when he first came in to office.

It turns out that randomly (OK, not completely randomly) throwing out free money doesn’t help to reduce inflation. In fact, it helps increase it. That’s why a number of prominent economists (including former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers) have come out against the Biden administration’s economic plans. They know that, even if they think they’re a good idea in the long term, they won’t help right now. It helps explain why, after years of pushing for tax relief at the state and federal level, Republican candidates aren’t running around the country advocating the idea right now. They at least understand it wouldn’t be good for the economy at the moment.

It might very well be that none of the ideas that Republicans put forward will do much to fight inflation. For the moment, that’s OK, because at least they aren’t proposing anything that will increase inflation even more. Politicians might not be able to do much to fight inflation, but they could at least promise not to add to it. Right now, Democrats won’t even do that much.

Jim Fossel, a conservative activist from Gardiner, worked for Sen. Susan Collins. He can be contacted at:
jwfossel@gmail.com
Twitter: @jimfossel