President Joe Biden claimed Thursday that inflation would only get worse if Republicans took majorities in Congress after the midterm elections.
“If Republicans win, inflation is going to get worse. It’s that simple,” Biden said.
The president spoke about inflation during a speech to Democrats and supporters in Los Angeles, reacting to new data concerning the consumer price index from the Labor Department.
The numbers showed that prices continue to go up, as prices increased 0.4 percent from the month of August.
Core inflation, a data point excluding food and energy, increased 6.6 percent from a year ago, the highest since 1982.
But Biden tried to put an optimistic spin on the bad numbers.
“Today’s inflation report shows some progress,” he said. “Overall, inflation was two percent over the last three months. That’s down from 11 percent over the prior three months.”
The president also took credit for the cost of gas declining from record prices during the summer.
“That’s progress,” he boasted. “But a lot of it is the result of getting the cost of living at the gas pump down, by more, now even in California now by more than a dollar nationally since we started this summer.”
Today’s average for a gallon of gas in the state of California is $6.196, much higher than the national average of $3.913.
Biden promised to keep working on lowering high gas prices.
“The price of gas is still too high and we need to keep working to bring it down,” he said.
