On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “America Reports,” Rep. and U.S. Senate candidate Tim Ryan (D-OH) argued President Joe Biden needs to do more on inflation than just blame others and wouldn’t say whether he considers Biden an asset or liability for Democrats.
Co-host John Roberts asked, [relevant exchange begins around 1:55] “Polls show that in the state of Ohio and just about every state in the nation, one of the top, if not the top issue is inflation. President Biden is well underwater on that. In a recent Fox News poll, 67% of people disapproved of his handling of inflation. And here’s what a Washington Post editorial said about the president today, ‘Biden’s Magical Thinking on Inflation Continues’ ‘While the White House looks for culprits to blame for inflation, it has struggled to articulate any sort of plan.’ ‘To show voters he is on top of the problem, Mr. Biden needs to do more than blame someone else for high prices.’ Do you agree, does the president need to do more than blame other people for inflation?”
Ryan answered, “I do. I do think that there is some corporate responsibility here, corporations are making a lot of money and I think we need to make sure that the consumers aren’t getting gouged. But I’ve been calling on the administration and anybody else who will listen to bring an immediate tax cut to the Congress for us to pass. The earned income tax cut, the child tax cut that we had in last year, advance this so it’s going right to consumers, and then a general tax cut for workers and maybe small businesses to put money in their pockets. No one did anything wrong, pandemic, economic collapse, war with an oil-producing country that invaded an agriculture powerhouse in Europe with the Ukraine, China messing with us at every turn. The American consumers didn’t do anything wrong. Pass a tax cut, put money in people’s pockets now, and let’s ride this thing out together. People are struggling. They have been for 30 or 40 years. It’s time for the Democrats to call for a tax cut for working people.”
After listing some figures on the economy, Roberts asked, “I mean, when you look at that, Congressman, is this president, generally speaking, an asset for Democrats or a liability?”
Ryan responded, “Well, as I said, I’m calling on the administration to encourage Congress, and to sign, hopefully, at some point, a tax cut. Look, there’s — it’s a complicated world out there. I think most people recognize that. You have — Russia invades Ukraine, they’re a huge oil and gas producing country, that’s going to cause some destabilization in the markets. You’ve got China playing footsies with Russia, that’s a problem. You’ve still got the pandemic, and what’s going on in China now their zero-COVID policy, it’s locking up the supply chain. So, tax cut in the short-term, but we’ve got to bring these jobs back. This is the problem, 30 or 40 years, both Democrats and Republicans have sold out the American workers and said, well, we’re going to be just worried about our shareholders and making money, and all those jobs went to China. Now, you look at glove manufacturing, you look at all these other things across the board, the inflation problem is because we can’t get products out of China. We became so dependent on them, which was stupid. We’ve got to bring these jobs back, which is what I’m trying to do, infrastructure bill, how do we rebuild this country, how do we bring back the chip manufacturings like this big Intel project that we’re doing in Ohio that’s going to create thousands of jobs with the average wage of $135,000 a year, that’s how you rebuild the American economy. And so, that’s got to be our focus.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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