WASHINGTON — President Biden claimed Wednesday that voters were wrong to blame him for high inflation because it “was 9% when I came to office” — when in fact it actually was just 1.4%.
“No president has had the run we’ve had in terms of creating jobs and bringing down inflation, It was 9% when I came to office — 9%,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett in a rare interview.
The 81-year-old president defended his economic policies after Burnett pressed him on the fact that “voters by a wide margin trust [former President Donald] Trump more on the economy.”
Biden insisted ahead of his November rematch against Trump that he already “turned around” the economy, despite persistently high inflation and interest rates.
Inflation crept up shortly after Biden took office before surging to rates unseen since the early 1980s, peaking at an annual rate of 9.1% in June 2022 — 17 months after he took office.
Inflation has remained stubbornly high at an annual rate of 3.5% as of March.
Biden’s critics, including prominent Democratic economists, say massive spending passed during Biden’s first year in office fueled the rapid loss of a dollar’s buying power by effectively printing more money.
Since Biden took office, the average prices of goods and services have increased 19%, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
During Trump’s four years in office, by comparison, prices increased by 8%, or roughly 2% per year.
“Voters by a wide margin trust Trump more on the economy — they say that in polls — and part of the reason for that may be the numbers,” Burnett told Biden during a day-trip to swing-state Wisconsin.
“And you’re aware of many of these, of course: the cost of buying a home in the United States is double what it was — when you look at your monthly costs — from before the pandemic, real income when you account for inflation is actually down since you took office, economic growth last week fell short of expectations, consumer confidence — maybe no surprise — is near a two-year low.”
Burnett asked: “With less than six months to go to election day, are you worried that you’re running out of time to turn that around? “
“We’ve already turned it around,” Biden insisted.
“Look at the [University of] Michigan survey — 65% of the American people think they’re in good shape economically. They think the nation is not in good shape. They’re personally good shape. The polling data has been wrong all along.”
Biden said that high inflation was the result of “corporate greed” and “shrinkflation,” after previously blaming COVID-19 supply chain issues and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“There’s corporate greed going on out there,” the president said.
“But there’s real pain,” Burnett countered.
“I mean, grocery prices are up 30% — more than 30% — since the beginning of the pandemic. And people are spending more on food and groceries than they have at any time, really, in the past 30 years. I mean, that’s a real day-to-day pain that people feel.”
“It’s real,” Biden replied, adding, “But the fact is that if you take a look at what the people have, they have the money to spend; it angers them and angers me that you have to spend more. For example, the whole idea of this notion Senator [Bob] Casey [of Pennsylvania] talked about, shrink inflation. For example, Snickers bar they did a thing, and it’s like 20% less for the same price. That’s corporate greed, it is corporate greed. And we’ve got to deal with it.”
The pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc responded to the interview with a press release saying that “Joe Biden was confronted with the poor state of Bidenomics during a CNN interview Wednesday and was asked if he’s running out of time to improve the economy. Biden lied and said, ‘we’ve already turned it around.’”
The group highlighted data showing credit card debt up 38.7% since Biden took office, with 65% of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck and a record number of people unable to afford rent.
Prominent Democrats also have blamed Biden for the inflation crisis, which prompted the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates dramatically.
Average credit card interest rates currently are 27.64% — nearly double the 14.6% average when Biden took office — and average 30-year home mortgage rates have soared from 2.65% to more than 7% for the average 30-year mortgage.
Democratic economist Steven Rattner, who led the Obama Treasury Department’s auto bailout, branded Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus law, passed in March 2021 without any Republican votes, as the “original sin” of the inflation crisis.
“The bill — almost completely unfunded — sought to counter the effects of the Covid pandemic by focusing on demand-side stimulus rather than on investment. That has contributed materially to today’s inflation levels,” Ratter wrote in a November 2021 New York Times op-ed.
Larry Summers, who worked as President Barack Obama’s top White House economist and as President Bill Clinton’s treasury secretary, also blamed Biden’s spending.
Summers wrote in a February 2021 Washington Post op-ed that Biden’s stimulus bill could “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.”
“There’s an element in this that the secret sauce of economics is arithmetic,” Summers reflected in July 2022.
“And there were many people in the debate who didn’t do arithmetic… and they thought more stimulus was good, so more stimulus was better, and they didn’t think too much stimulus was really possible.”
