President Joe Biden is only a few weeks away from the end of his time in office, and one key part of his legacy is undeniable: inflation.
Biden has battled inflation from the start, but critics say he helped fuel it with trillions of dollars in deficit spending during his four years in office. Federal debt spending is offset in part by printing money, which increases inflation.
Biden has boasted bringing inflation rates down from about 9% earlier in his term to roughly 2.5% currently.
While the rate of inflation has slowed, that doesn’t mean prices have decreased. In fact, they continue rising, albeit slower than earlier in his term.
The federal government released a a key inflation marker Friday, its Personal Consumption Expenditure index, which rose 2.4% last month, a bit less than expected.
Overall, though, prices have risen more than 20% since Biden took office.
According to the federal CPI inflation calculator, $100 in January 2021, when Biden took office, has the same buying power as $120 as of November of this year. That means $100 went much further in 2021 than it would today.
The price of groceries actually rose faster than overall inflation, increasing more than 22% since Biden took office.
Those higher prices have given Republicans plenty of fodder for their attacks on the incumbent president.
Polling data showed that despite some positive economic indicators this year — relatively low unemployment among them — Americans still had a poor view of the economy. At least one reason why was undeniably that costs, for groceries in particular, have soared since Biden took office.
