Kamala Harris doesn’t like to talk about inflation for good reason.
As costs continue to rise well above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target in the final year of the Biden-Harris presidency, Americans are already headed to the polls this fall with the economic carnage of the incumbent administration fresh in mind. Monday’s stock market crash offered voters the reminder they didn’t need, with former President Donald Trump quick to label the election-year stress test “Kamala Crash.” Considering the vice president also cast the tie-breaking vote on legislation to drive rising prices, Trump might also call sustained inflation “Kamalaflation,” although apparently they tried.
For Harris, inflation and the border, the nation’s two top issues this election, have made the ticket vulnerable to a blow out at the ballot box unless Democrats can overcome a pending red wave with enough ballot harvesting. The Biden administration’s “Border Czar” certainly can’t run on a decrepit border, and she’s clearly uncomfortable on the economy.
Shortly after capturing her party’s nomination under Biden’s fallout last month, the Associated Press reported that Harris “began to craft her own narrative around the economy by putting an emphasis on ending child poverty, promoting labor unions, reducing the costs of health and child care and protecting ‘dignity’ in retirement.”
But “not once in speeches in Wisconsin, Indiana or Texas did she mention the word ‘inflation’ — the overwhelming economic challenge that has dogged Biden’s administration and forced him in remarks to consistently acknowledge voters’ pain as they cope with higher grocery, gasoline, housing and auto expenses.”
Maybe that’s because the week President Joe Biden bowed out, a New York Times/Siena College survey found just a quarter of U.S. voters believed the economy was either excellent or good while 75 percent said otherwise. Harris, meanwhile, tried to sell the Democrats’ reckless spending sprees the same year the administration was pretending inflation was “transitory.”
“Prices have gone up, and families and individuals are dealing with the realities of — that bread costs more, that gas costs more,” Harris said in 2021. “And we have to understand what that means. That’s about the cost of living going up… So it’s a big issue, and we take it seriously, and it is a priority, therefore.”
After stating the obvious in her typical roundabout fashion, Harris touted the multi-trillion-dollar “Build Back Better” plan as priceless.
“Build Back Better is not going to cost anything,” she said. “So when we can get Build Back Better passed, and we are optimistic that we will, the American people will see costs actually reduced around some of the most essential services that they need to take care of their basic responsibilities, including issues like child care and elder care, and also preschool.”
The spending package passed, and Harris went on to cast the tie-breaking vote on the Democrats’ dubiously named Inflation Reduction Act the following year. She broke a tie in the upper chamber to pass the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March 2021.
And here’s what Harris said three years later on a “Nationwide Economic Opportunity Tour” in May:
I believe every person in our country, then, must have access to the opportunity to compete, to succeed, and to thrive; the ability to achieve what I call financial freedom, which means having enough not just to get by but to get ahead — (applause) — to be able to build a business, to own a home, to start a family, and to create intergenerational wealth.
Which is why, over the past three years, the President and I have invested now trillions of dollars in America’s infrastructure, in clean energy and a clean energy economy, in manufacturing, and in supply chains.
Except spending trillions in taxpayer dollars to subsidize artificial markets because they’re ostensibly “clean” while cracking down on cheap and reliable energy helped deliver the “Kamala Crash” on Monday.
“Democrats have ‘normalized’ $7 trillion a year in federal outlays — with $2 trillion of it borrowed — all to keep their core constituencies fat and happy,” wrote the New York Post editorial board this week. “That triggered soaring inflation, which obliged the Federal Reserve to spike interest rates, and still makes it risky for the Fed to start easing up, even as it’s killing the job market. And now, it seems, the stock market.”
Harris owns every failure of the Biden administration, including “Bidenflation,” easily rebranded as “Kamalaflation.”
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