Rep. John Rose Commentary: Inflation Is the Invisible Tax

by Rep. John Rose

Inflation is an invisible tax that Tennesseans have to pay each and every day. Everywhere you look, inflation is wreaking havoc. At the gas station: gas is up 48 percent. At the grocery store: beef is up 20 percent, chicken is up 15 percent, butter is up 14 percent, fruits and vegetables are up 7 percent, and coffee is up 12 percent. At home: electricity is up 11 percent, furniture is up 15 percent, and rent is up 5 percent. What about a vacation? You still won’t be able to escape inflation as hotels are up 29 percent and flights are up 23 percent.

Recent graduates entering the workforce will be forced to pay record-high rent and other expenses as they enter adulthood. New mothers and fathers will pay 10 percent higher prices for baby food, if they can even find it on the shelves. Many Americans who saved their entire lives to retire comfortably are now faced with the brutal realization that they may not have saved enough.

Even Nashville International Airport, which is renovating and expanding, was hit hard by inflation when the price of a new satellite concourse jumped from $92.5 million in March of 2021 to $134.5 million today. As you can see, inflation affects every aspect of our lives. It’s costing the average American family an extra $327 a month.

Inflation isn’t something one can easily turn off, but President Biden and Congressional Democrats proved that their reckless progressive policies can certainly turn it on! Since President Biden took office and Democrats gained control of both chambers of Congress, inflation has increased every single month.

They borrowed from future generations to spend trillions of dollars on wasteful government programs while assuring us that it wouldn’t cause inflation – even though we all knew it would. That’s why it is so disingenuous that the president, his administration, his Democratic allies in Congress, and the mainstream media are blaming inflation on the invasion of Ukraine. To use one of the president’s favorite words, that’s pure malarkey.

Meanwhile, as my constituents feel more pain each day from the growing inflation disaster, the president and his administration hardly even mention it, much less offer solutions, except to try to spend trillions of dollars more that we don’t have, which will of course only make things worse. Just look at President Biden’s budget proposal, where inflation is not mentioned even one time. Instead, it calls for spending a whopping $75 trillion over the next decade, much of it borrowed.

There is no denying that massive deficit spending got us in this harmful mess and doing more of the same certainly won’t get us out of it. I and my fellow conservatives have pushed back as hard as we can against this reckless approach to governing, but we have been outnumbered and outvoted.

Even though we’re outgunned for now, I will nevertheless continue to do all I can to fight back on every wasteful spending bill the Democrats bring until our common-sense conservative reinforcements are elected in the fall and arrive in January.

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John Rose represents the 6th District of Tennessee in the United States House of Representatives.
Photo “Rep. John Rose” by Rep John Rose.