President Joe Biden has unveiled a three-part plan to fight rising inflation in the U.S., which is having a significant effect on his falling approval ratings.
In an op-ed he wrote for The Wall Street Journal ahead of a meeting with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Tuesday, the president assured Americans his administration is doing everything it can to lower prices.
“We now have a chance to build on a historic recovery with an economy that works for working families. The most important thing we can do now to transition from rapid recovery to stable, steady growth is to bring inflation down. That is why I have made tackling inflation my top economic priority.”
The first part of Biden’s plan is an acknowledgment that the Federal Reserve “has a primary responsibility to control inflation.” Although Biden didn’t say his name, he did say his predecessor, Donald Trump, “demeaned the Fed,” something Biden said he will not do.
The second part will focus on lowering gas prices and making
goods more affordable for American families, adding that gas prices are high due to the Russia-Ukraine war, though the release of global oil reserves has helped. Biden also called on Congress to pass clean energy tax credits.To lower the price of goods including food, Biden said his plan will fix supply chains, improve infrastructure “and crackdown on the exorbitant fees that foreign ocean freight companies charge to move products.”
While lowering gas prices is a big priority for the president, his own Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholmtold, told CNN
there’s not much more Biden can do since he has already fired the biggest bullet he had by releasing oil reserves. “The president doesn’t control the price,” Granholm said during the interview at a General Electric wind turbine facility in New Orleans.Part three of Biden’s plan involves reducing the federal deficit through “common-sense reforms to the tax code.”
“We should level the international taxation playing field so companies no longer have an incentive to shift jobs and profits overseas. And we should end the outrageous unfairness in the tax code that allows a billionaire to pay lower rates than a teacher or firefighter,” Biden wrote.
Inflation has been a burden for the Biden Administration to deal with and his falling approval ratings spell trouble for Democrats in the midterm elections later this fall. The slim majority Democrats have during Biden’s first two years haven’t been much of one as Democrat Sens. Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema have blocked Biden’s legislative agenda numerous times.