As Americans stroll the grocery aisles, confronted with sticker shock at every turn, a central issue that has plagued the Biden-Harris administration since its inception comes into focus: inflation is still taking its toll.
It is not just any inflation, but the kind that strikes at the heart of every family’s kitchen—grocery prices.
The numbers tell a grim story. Polls consistently show that inflation is the top concern for voters, and it’s easy to see why. Under the Biden-Harris administration, the cost of “food at home”—bureaucratese for groceries—has surged by over 21 percent.
A recent YouGov poll found that a staggering 77 percent of Americans consider inflation a “very important” issue. A poll for the Financial Times found that 78 percent of registered voters say inflation has been one of the three biggest sources of personal financial stress.
Food inflation is at the heart of voter anxiety over price increases. The Financial Times poll found that seventy-eight percent of voters said food inflation is a major drag on their financial situation.
Despite the rhetoric from the White House, which seeks to downplay this issue by pointing to recent moderations in price increases, the fact remains that grocery prices have skyrocketed under Harris’s watch. Harris played a pivotal role in the legislative agenda that led us to this point. Her tie-breaking votes in the Senate helped push through trillions in spending, which many economists say helped fuel the inflation crisis.
The first 42 months of the the Biden-Harris administration have seen the biggest increase in food inflation under any president since Jimmy Carter. It is the third largest increase over the first three-and-a-half years of a presidential term ever recorded in data going back to 1952, trailing Carter’s record and Nixon’s second term.
By contrast, grocery prices rose just 6.3 percent over the first 42 months of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Food prices are still rising. The index for food rose 0.2 percent in July and was up 0.1 percent for the category covering groceries, the second straight month of rising prices following four months of negative readings on the consumer price index for food at home.
