Biden says he takes no blame for inflation, which was at 1.4% when he took office

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Joe Biden
Biden says he takes no blame for inflation, which was at 1.4% when he took office
Joe Biden
Biden says he takes no blame for inflation, which was at 1.4% when he took office
Biden Democrats
President Joe Biden meets with members of the Congressional Black Caucus in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023. Biden hasn’t announced a reelection campaign, but some of the themes of his likely bid should be on display when he addresses a national Democratic Party meeting. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

President
Joe Biden
said Friday he takes no blame for
high inflation
under his watch, though inflation has spiked considerably during his two years in the
White House
.

The inflation rate was 1.4% the month Biden took office. It reached 5% by May 2021 and peaked at 9.1% last June, a figure not seen in more than 40 years, before receding
back to 5%
in December. Even that figure remains 2 1/2 times above the Federal Reserve’s target rate of 2%.



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A reporter asked Biden if he takes the blame for any of it.

“Do I take any blame for inflation? No,” Biden said. “It was already here when I got here, man. Remember what the economy was like when I got here? Jobs were hemorrhaging. Inflation was rising. We weren’t manufacturing a damn thing here. We were in real economic difficulty. That’s why I don’t, thank you.”

Biden’s claim that inflation was rising when he took office in January 2021 is questionable. Inflation had been
at or below 1.5%
in each of the last 10 months before he was inaugurated.

The federal government had already approved trillions in pandemic-related economic stimulus by that point, however. And after Biden entered the White House, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan, which pumped another $1.9 trillion of stimulus into the economy.

Republicans have pointed to the plan and Biden’s big-spending ways for the inflation that took off shortly thereafter. Democrats and left-leaning economists have tended to point to other factors, especially lingering supply chain constraints created by lockdown policies.

Other economic factors have remained strong. Biden’s remarks came after it was announced that unemployment reached its
lowest level since 1969
.


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The economy has also added more than 10 million jobs during the Biden presidency, though some of that is due to the lifting of pandemic restrictions over the last two years.

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