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FACT CHECK: Who’s to blame for high grocery, energy, other costs?

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From The Center Square

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With inflationary costs reaching a 40-year high under the Biden-Harris administration, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and others in their administration have repeatedly blamed businesses, livestock producers, grocery stores, oil and natural gas companies and others for high prices.

At the same time, a record number of businesses closed, declared bankruptcy and laid off hundreds of thousands of workers, citing high inflationary costs. In a recent report, nearly half of all small businesses said they won’t survive a second Harris term, higher costs and increased taxes, The Center Square reported.

Despite this, Harris says she plans to implement price controls, increase taxes on businesses and allow the 2017 tax cuts to expire, creating a $6 trillion chasm between her plan and former President Donald Trump’s, the Wall Street Journal reported.

As Americans struggled with increased grocery costs, including the high cost of meat, producers were faced with higher fuel, feed, grain and hay costs, driving up their operational costs that were passed onto consumers, according to multiple reports. In response, in 2021, the White House National Economic Council blamed high meat prices on “dominant corporations in uncompetitive markets taking advantage of their market power.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce disagrees, arguing that market concentration in the meat packing industry had been virtually unchanged for 25 years at the time. It then asked “if high prices are the result of corporate greed, why did these ‘greedy’ companies wait two decades to raise prices?” It clarified that increased meat prices were driven by supply and demand and overall inflation, largely created by increased federal spending and debt.

With costs increasing across the board, some companies adjusted by selling less product for more, referred to as shrinkflation, The Center Square first reported in 2022. However, Biden and Harris blamed companies for higher costs, reportedly in response to Democratic operatives advising them to do so, The​ Washington Post reported.

“What we said is, ‘You need a villain or an explanation for this. If you don’t provide one, voters will fill one in. The right is providing an explanation, which is that you’re spending too much,’” one Democratic operative told the Post. “That point finally became convincing to people in the White House.”

“And thus began the effort to wrongly blame employers for high prices,” the chamber’s executive vice president Neil Bradley said in a report identifying examples of the White House “wrongly blaming businesses for high prices.”

Also in 2022, Biden publicly blamed container companies for high shipping costs. News reports pointed to supply chain issues impacted by worker shortages, changes in customer spending that resulted in more cargo arriving in ports that the ports couldn’t handle, and port fines and fees contributing to higher costs.

The chamber notes that increased prices “resulted from consumers shifting their spending from services to goods” during the COVID-lockdown era, causing increased cargo demand. “Increased demand created backlogs at the ports, raising prices even higher. As supply and demand normalized, prices fell.”

By 2023, the president again publicly blamed the U.S. oil and natural gas industry for gas prices reaching a seven-year high. This was after he took more than 200 actions against the U.S. oil and natural gas industry, U.S. House Democrats introduced a bill that would have added a 50% per barrel tax, and the U.S. Treasury Department proposed a $110 billion tax hike on the industry, The Center Square reported.

But the industry doesn’t control the market, it’s subject to it like everyone else, Texas Independent Producers & Royalty Owners Association President Ed Longanecker said. The Biden-Harris administration could have lowered costs by expediting permits, lifting the federal leasing ban and creating “a more stable regulatory environment that provides certainty to producers and investors,” he told The Center Square. “Overburdensome regulations, increased taxes and anti-oil and natural gas rhetoric” exacerbated high energy prices and raised consumer costs, he said.

The administration has also repeatedly sued the industry and Texas, which leads U.S. production, exports and energy creation. In response, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has aggressively fought to protect the Texas industry from Biden policies, the governor argues.

Also in 2023, the chair of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers said grocery sector profit margins “were elevated” and needed to “pass-through” to consumers. Earlier this year, Biden again claimed, “there are still too many corporations in America ripping people off: price gouging, junk fees, greedflation, shrinkflation.”

The chamber refutes these claims, pointing to federal data, arguing that “higher grocery prices are a result of inflationary pressure across the supply chain and basic supply and demand dynamics,” explained by Department of Agriculture and Government Accountability Office economists.

Biden and Harris blaming businesses for high prices is “entirely backward,” Bradley says. “The truth is the Administration’s own fiscal and regulatory policies are driving inflation, and the American consumer is left holding the bag.”

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2025 Federal Election

Carney’s budget is worse than Trudeau’s

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By Gage Haubrich

Liberal Leader Mark Carney is planning to borrow more money than former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

That’s an odd plan for a former banker because the federal government is already spending more on debt interest payments than it spends on health-care transfers to the provinces.

Let’s take a deeper look at Carney’s plan.

Carney says that his government would “spend less, invest more.”

At first glance, that might sound better than the previous decade of massive deficits and increasing debt, but does that sound like a real change?

Because if you open a thesaurus, you’ll find that “spend” and “invest” are synonyms, they mean the same thing.

And Carney’s platform shows it. Carney plans to increase government spending by $130 billion. He plans to increase the federal debt by $225 billion over the next four years. That’s about $100 billion more than Trudeau was planning borrow over the same period, according to the most recent Fall Economic Statement.

Carney is planning to waste $5.6 billion more on debt interest charges than Trudeau. Interest charges already cost taxpayers more than $1 billion per week.

The platform claims that Carney will run a budget surplus in 2028, but that’s nonsense. Because once you include the $48 billion of spending in Carney’s “capital” budget, the tiny surplus disappears, and taxpayers are stuck with more debt.

And that’s despite planning to take even more money from Canadians in years ahead. Carney’s platform shows that his carbon tariff, another carbon tax on Canadians, will cost taxpayers $500 million.

The bottom line is that government spending, no matter what pile it is put into, is just government spending. And when the government spends too much, that means it must borrow more money, and taxpayers have to pay the interest payments on that irresponsible borrowing.

Canadians don’t even believe that Carney can follow through on his watered-down plan. A majority of Canadians are skeptical that Carney will balance the operational budget in three years, according to Leger polling.

All Carney’s plan means for Canadians is more borrowing and higher debt. And taxpayers can’t afford anymore debt.

When the Liberals were first elected the debt was $616 billion. It’s projected to reach almost $1.3 trillion by the end of the year, that means the debt has more than doubled in the last decade.

Every single Canadian’s individual share of the federal debt averages about $30,000.

Interest charges on the debt are costing taxpayers $53.7 billion this year. That’s more than the government takes in GST from Canadians. That means every time you go to the grocery store, fill up your car with gas, or buy almost anything else, all that federal sales tax you pay isn’t being used for anything but paying for the government’s poor financial decisions.

Creative accounting is not the solution to get the government’s fiscal house in order. It’s spending cuts. And Carney even says this.

“The federal government has been spending too much,” said Carney. He then went on to acknowledge the huge spending growth of the government over the last decade and the ballooning of the federal bureaucracy. A serious plan to balance the budget and pay down debt includes cutting spending and slashing bureaucracy.

But the Conservatives aren’t off the hook here either. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said that he will balance the budget “as soon as possible,” but hasn’t told taxpayers when that is.

More debt today means higher taxes tomorrow. That’s because every dollar borrowed by the federal government must be paid back plus interest. Any party that says it wants to make life more affordable also needs a plan to start paying back the debt.

Taxpayers need a government that will commit to balancing the budget for real and start paying back debt, not one that is continuing to pile on debt and waste billions on interest charges.

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2025 Federal Election

As PM Poilievre would cancel summer holidays for MP’s so Ottawa can finally get back to work

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From Conservative Party Communications

In the first 100 days, a new Conservative government will pass 3 laws:

1. Affordability For a Change Act—cutting spending, income tax, sales tax off homes

2. Safety For a Change Act to lock up criminals

3. Bring Home Jobs Act—that repeals C-69, sets up 6 month permit turnarounds for new projects

No summer holiday til they pass!

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre announced today that as Prime Minister he will cancel the summer holiday for Ottawa politicians and introduce three pieces of legislation to make life affordable, stop crime, and unleash our economy to bring back powerful paycheques. Because change can’t wait.

A new Conservative government will kickstart the plan to undo the damage of the Lost Liberal Decade and restore the promise of Canada with a comprehensive legislative agenda to reverse the worst Trudeau laws and cut the cost of living, crack down on crime, and unleash the Canadian economy with ‘100 Days of Change.’ Parliament will not rise until all three bills are law and Canadians get the change they voted for.

“After three Liberal terms, Canadians want change now,” said Poilievre. “My plan for ‘100 Days of Change’ will deliver that change. A new Conservative government will immediately get to work, and we will not stop until we have delivered lower costs, safer streets, and bigger paycheques.”

The ’100 Days of Change’ will include three pieces of legislation:

The Affordability–For a Change Act 

Will lower food prices, build more homes, and bring back affordability for Canadians by:

We will also:

  • Identify 15% of federal buildings and lands to sell for housing in Canadian cities.

The Safe Streets–For a Change Act 

Will end the Liberal violent crime wave by:

The Bring Home Jobs–For a Change Act 

This Act will be rocket fuel for our economy. We will unleash Canada’s vast resource wealth, bring back investment, and create powerful paycheques for workers so we can stand on our own feet and stand up to Trump from a position of strength, by:

Poilievre will also:

  • Call President Trump to end the damaging and unjustified tariffs and accelerate negotiations to replace CUSMA with a new deal on trade and security. We need certainty—not chaos, but Conservatives will never compromise on our sovereignty and security. 
  • Get Phase 2 of LNG Canada built to double the project’s natural gas production.
  • Accelerate at least nine other projects currently snarled in Liberal red tape to get workers working and Canada building again.

“After the Lost Liberal Decade of rising costs and crime and a falling economy under America’s thumb, we cannot afford a fourth Liberal term,” said Poilievre. “We need real change, and that is what Conservatives will bring in the first 100 days of a new government. A new Conservative government will get to work on Day 1 and we won’t stop until we have delivered the change we promised, the change Canadians deserve, the change Canadians voted for.”

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