Everything costs too much — just make it stop!

According to almost every poll, the No. 1 issue on everyone’s mind is the cost of buying things so they can live happy, healthy lives and provide for their families. That has been the case in most U.S. elections since the beginning of the republic.

To paraphrase James Carville, Bill Clinton’s former political adviser, “It’s the cost of groceries, stupid!” instead of “it’s the economy, stupid!” Job security and economic security are all intertwined, but people buy groceries every day and can see the cost of living going up right before their eyes on an itemized receipt each time they shop.

The war in Iran and approval of President Donald Trump as a person trail the cost of living in every poll, along with every other major public policy issue.

The inflation rate stayed unbelievably low, close to 2% from 1982 to 2020, until COVID hit. Americans got used to low inflation rates and the low interest rates that accompanied them for such a long period that when inflation exploded under the Biden administration, they were not prepared for the ramifications thereafter.

If controlling inflation and the higher costs of living were simple, or self-correcting in a short period of time, it would not matter as much who was elected or to which party or political philosophy they belonged.

But inflation is not simple to solve. Simply throwing tax money at constituents or canceling all kinds of debt as the Democrats are proposing would make inflation matters much worse, not better.

Reducing inflation for the long run can be summed up in reports from the Republican staff of the Joint Economic Committee that have stated the following commonsense principles for decades:

• Reducing government spending would tamp down on demand-fueled inflation while at the same time restoring confidence in the ability of the federal government to pay down the debt and thus control inflation expectations.
• Removing barriers to work through occupational licensing reform, increased work flexibility and mitigating work disincentives in tax and transfer programs would increase labor force participation, thereby reducing the cost of production for firms.
• Deregulation of energy, housing and other markets would reduce the regulatory burden on businesses, lowering the cost of domestic production and bringing down prices.
• Removing barriers to international supply by reducing tariffs and eliminating regulatory barriers would provide consumers access to cheaper goods and increase the resiliency of supply chains.

Candidates and the party that best explain how they are going to reduce the rising cost of buying groceries and everything else going forward are going to win the votes of the independent and unaffiliated voters who will determine who is elected this fall, not the fervent partisans on either end of the political spectrum.

It requires voters to elect candidates who understand the fundamentals of economics, business and monetary policy. It is particularly acute for congressional elections since Congress is responsible for how more than $6 trillion will be spent annually. Voters have to make sure they elect people who won’t repeat the mistakes of hundreds of previous kingdoms, republics and dictatorships that have overspent their civilizations into extinction after first driving inflation rates through the roof.

Candidates don’t need a Ph.D. in monetary policy or a master’s degree in finance from any distinguished business school to be thoughtful stewards of taxpayer dollars and avoid contributing to the underlying causes of inflation. Each candidate has to be held accountable to the same standard of ethics ascribed to the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, which can be boiled down to “first of all, do no harm.”

One Democratic consultant put it succinctly upon hearing about the mishandling of taxpayer funds in Cary: “Would it be too much to ask that a person running for public office be able to read an income statement or a balance sheet?”

Monetary policy, or how much currency is in circulation, plays perhaps the largest part in determining inflation rates. However, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan openly admitted in a House Budget Committee hearing that being Fed chair would be the easiest job in America if Congress just balanced annual budgets and didn’t force the Fed to have to adjust monetary policy to counterbalance its inability to not run up debt. He said all he would do is set the computers to grow money supply at 2% annually and go home for the rest of the year.

Perhaps it is time to elect a Congress that will put the Fed chair on vacation.