In the May 30 Wall Street Journal piece, Biden wrote that inflation was "exacerbated by Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine," said Donald Trump demeaned the Fed, and urged Congress to pass clean energy tax credits and other investment proposals – all before calling for the end of the "outrageous unfairness in the tax code that allows a billionaire to pay lower rates than a teacher or a firefighter."
Joel Griffith of The Heritage Foundation read the op-ed and argues the president talked in passing about the Federal Reserve and how it impacts inflation, but neglected to mention what's actually driving inflation.
"And what's driving it is the fact that politicians passed trillions of dollars' worth of spending the last few years in addition to what they normally spend," Griffith tells AFN. "And most of that spending was financed by the Federal Reserve, which means you had the Federal Reserve printing up dollars to buy up government debt.
"So without a doubt, the Fed deserves a lot of the blame … because they printed the money."
Griffith blames both Republicans and Democrats in Congress for approving spending plans.
"And [while] the president wants to take the credit for the total deficit this year being less than the year before, what he fails to admit is that he was actually pushing for even more spending," says the economic policy expert. "He was pushing for a multi-trillion-dollar [Build Back Better] plan that would have added even more to the deficit."
In March, Biden told the House Democratic Caucus Issues Conference that government is not to blame for inflation.
"I'm sick of this stuff," Biden told that group. "We have to talk about it because the American people think the reason for inflation is government spending more money. Simply not true."
