Seriously, the Federal Reserve Bank is already fighting inflation, raising interest rates to make money less available to borrow. They’re freezing housing starts a little, and therefore all those purchases of the stuff that fills every new home. They’re making people nervous about borrowing money for major purchases. Interest rates are the real lever for shifting inflationary pressures up or down, and that job is already being done. So when asking which political party should control the House or the Senate, Democrats or Republicans, the real questions are: where do they see a responsibility to do something useful? Who are they trying to help? Whose financial struggles they really care about. Do they argue based on actual facts, care about things that are really important? Do you see them helping people?
Republicans don’t actually want to hold down prices. Not for health care or health insurance – their obstruction is what locks us into system where even small medical emergencies can throw families into bankruptcy and out of their homes. Not for prescription drugs, sold for much more reasonable prices in literally every other country as a condition for approval for sale there. Not for your Internet or cable bills – it’s the Democrats who see Internet as critical infrastructure, real competition as an important consumer protection, and affordability of our connections as a basic right. Not for gas prices – Trump gleefully rolled back the higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard that was on its way, giving a big gift to oil companies but costing the all the rest of us in the long run.
I have no idea why so many people seem to think Republicans are magical geniuses of economic prosperity. Their policies failed in the Great Depression from 1929 until early 1933. Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, introduced New Deal policies that did double duty – relieving misery for those most in need, and stimulating the economy in ways that actually helped. Democrat Bill Clinton achieved the last actual balanced budget, then turned a healthy economy over to the Republican administration that followed. What came was George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich that overheated the economy in a way that led straight to the housing bubble, the financial meltdown of late 2008, and the Great Recession that followed.
Corporate leaders may sing the praises of Republicans, but it’s not because they see Republicans as wise stewards of a safely prosperous economy. They want the Wild West again, unregulated fast times with anticompetitive mergers, dangerously high debt loads, fast payouts, and quick escapes with billions in their back pockets, Jack Welch-style, before realizes the damage done. They don’t want prosperity for their workers, but power over their workers, Amazon-style. They want Trump-like immunity for every trick they pull. If you work for one of those companies, those guys are not your friends.
If you are serious about wanting to fight inflation, try this. Raise taxes a bit on those who can actually afford to pay. Oil companies that are profiteering off the disruptions caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine. Billionaires claiming extremely shady tax deductions or simply hiding income. Hedge fund managers getting their fat paychecks taxed at half the rate of everyone else as if those dollars magically transformed into long term capital gains. That little bit of restoration of tax fairness would do some good, and we could certainly find some good stuff to do with the revenue down the road. Like making sure more families with school age children still have food at the end of the month.
We already know that if the Republicans get control of the Senate and House again, the first thing they’ll try to do is pass huge new rounds of tax breaks for millionaires, billionaires, and corporations. The most inflationary thing they could do. Then when they rediscover the need for austerity, for holding down the national debt and “living within our means”, the cuts they’ll be pushing will be vicious. Cuts in future benefits from the Social Security and Medicare you’ve been contributing to all your working life.
Because exactly that kind of cut, the kind that breaks the contract every American with a W2-form thought they had, that’s their real plan. The billionaires bankrolling the MAGA crowd don’t want to “fight inflation” for the sake of actually stopping prices from going up. Hell, they make money from rising prices. Half the inflation we see is not higher labor or material costs, but instead fatter margins for businesses leading to enormous (often record) corporate profits. No, the term “fighting inflation” will be insincere, and it will be the weapon Republicans use to gut environmental protections, end program after critical program, and hammer the middle class, the elderly, and the working poor.
Republican economic policy is very simple. Step 1: Start with several trillion dollars of tax cuts benefiting mostly corporations and billionaires “to stimulate growth”. Which is about the most inflationary thing you can think of. If inflation results, go to Step 2: Pull money from schools, libraries, health care, veterans, medical research, fixing roads and bridges, etc. Cut Social Security if you can get away with it. Cut everything but the military. If all that austerity, all those spending cuts trigger a recession, go back to Step 1. Cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires again.
Stay away from those guys. They’re bad for you. We are the Democratic Party. Come with us if you want to live.