So even at the current levels, down from the highs of summer 2022, the Biden administration has not yet matched prior presidents’ inflation levels going back almost a decade, spanning Donald Trump’s entire presidency and the majority of President Barack Obama’s tenure.
In March 2021, when the American Rescue Plan was signed, the inflation rate was 2.6 percent. By May 2021, it was at 5 percent, starting a 23-month run at that rate or higher. The peak inflation run was a 12-month period from December 2021 through November 2022 of 7 percent or higher.
While the monthly, year-over-year rate has certainly dropped, the electorate sees this from a different perspective — by how much prices have gone up since Biden was inaugurated. That is more important to the electorate, as prices have increased by 17.3 percent, what The Winston Group has termed the Presidential Inflation Rate (PIR). In looking at the performance of the previous seven presidents at the same point in their terms, only President Jimmy Carter had a larger increase.
[Read the whole thing, as it has lots of good information. Winston leads off with Janet Yellen’s admission this weekend that prices are not going to fall, and that’s *exactly* the problem. It’s not that we want deflation, which has it own dire economic and financial risks. But the prices escalated so quickly and sharply under Biden’s economic policies that they are too easy to contrast to the prices before he took office. American voters get reminded of this every time they go to the grocery store. It’s an inescapable constant in most working- and middle-class households. It’s not even a question of “long memories,” but instead a persistent present. — Ed]
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