NASHVILLE, TN—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Banking Committee, today released the following statement in response to the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Real Earnings releases from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), showing a 6.8 percent annualized rate of inflation for November:
“In contrast to the Christmas spirit—inflation is the gift that keeps on taking instead of giving. Month after month, the American people are being burned by historic inflation, soaring prices, and declining real wages. If alarm bells weren’t already ringing in the White House and Democrats’ offices—and I don’t know how they couldn’t have been—then today’s historic rise in the Consumer Price Index ought to be another reality check. We haven’t seen this level of misery since 1982—the year Diet Coke came out and Knoxville hosted the World’s Fair—and if Democrats irresponsibly and destructively choose to dump another $5 trillion into the economy, then this will only get worse. Their taxing-and-spending is crushing hardworking Tennesseans, especially those on fixed incomes, and it has to end.”