Fox News host Harris Faulkner clashed with a fellow panelist on “Outnumbered” Tuesday over how much blame President Joe Biden should shoulder for the economy.
“You can’t just blame inflation on the Biden administration, you just have to look at facts,” Leslie Marshall, a Democratic consultant, said. “The facts are you gotta look at the Feds. There is definitely certainly a global issue, my party is not that powerful that they can affect an international inflation rate in an international economy. Three, Putin invading the Ukraine and the war there certainly had an effect. Lingering economics and the pandemic certainly has an effect and we have to go back once again to the Feds, our Feds were slow and not aggressive enough to act with regard to inflation when they knew it was coming.” (RELATED: ‘Issues Of Survival’: ‘The Five’ Blast Biden For Living In ‘Fantasy Land’ On Crime, Inflation)
Faulkner responded by pointing out inflation had been climbing the previous November, months before Russia invaded Ukraine. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 6.8% year-over-year in November 2021 and climbed 7% year-over-year in December 2021.
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Experts, including former Obama administration official Steven Rattner, claim the spending in legislation like the American Rescue Plan Biden signed into law in March 2021, helped send inflation to levels not seen for decades. The CPI increased 8.2% year-to-year in September after rising by 8.3% in August, 8.6% in July, 9.1% in June and 8.5% in May.
“The war shouldn’t even be a calculation then,” Faulkner said. “It was cooking almost as high as what we have now at 8.1 or 2, which is a 40-year high, as it was in November of 2021. You cannot even fathom anything other than these policies getting us there because nothing else had taken hold yet.”
Faulkner also hammered Biden for his response to the economic downturn, including a claim that the economy was “strong as hell” during a visit to Oregon.
“All Biden has said is how resilient we are as an economy,” Faulkner added later. “He blames Russia, he blames all of these other things. But when you look at it, you have to look at his spending. You have to!”
“Let me ask you, can you name one politician, left or right, that has ever said the economy’s bad, it’s on me? Nobody,” Marshall responded.
Faulkner continued to press the point about Biden.
“’I feel what you’re feeling, I know how you’re feeling and I want to make it better and here is what I’m going to do,’” Faulkner said, describing what Biden should have been saying. “Instead, know what they did? They touted a lie and put lipstick on the pig and called it Inflation Reduction Act. It had nothing to do with reduced inflation. It reduces the deficit and that is a beautiful thing but there is not a one-to-one match. CBO said it, we didn’t get that score out on that Friday before they rammed it through over the weekend when they passed this. Look, I could go on for hours like this, let’s just call it what it is. He’s gotta own it. He’s gotta own it.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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