Government Delivered Inflation—but No Real Aid—in North Carolina
North Carolina can’t catch a break under the Biden-Harris administration.
The federal government’s appalling response to Hurricane Helene almost surely cost lives, adding insult to the injury of the inflation that has been crushing Tar Heel State residents for 3 1/2 years. In fact, prices there have risen even faster than the national average.
The 40-year-high inflation that has afflicted North Carolinians specifically and Americans broadly started in Washington with runaway government spending. At the start of 2021, prices were rising at an annual rate of just 1.4%, and the economy was growing steadily.
Instead of allowing the economic recovery to simply continue and let one-time emergency COVID-19 spending expire, President Joe Biden pushed for trillions of dollars in new spending bills, bloated with left-wing boondoggles and special-interest handouts.
A spendthrift Congress obliged and, whenever necessary, Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate to approve multitrillion-dollar spending bills. A recent analysis showed that Harris’ action in pushing through those pieces of legislation accounted for half the excess inflation in the last three years.
That’s because every time Congress and the White House spent money the nation didn’t have, the Federal Reserve ended up creating the money for the Treasury to spend. This rampant increase in the money supply cut one-fifth of the value of the dollar in less than four years, which in turn caused prices to rise.
Since inflation has far outpaced wage gains, families have had to either reduce their spending or go into debt. That’s why credit card debt is at a record high and Americans are paying over $300 billion annually in finance charges on their outstanding balances.
But North Carolina has actually been hit harder by inflation than the national average. The Heritage Foundation’s personal inflation calculator uses official government data to show that household-related expenses in the South Atlantic region have increased 23%—or $983 per month—since January 2021.
To put that in perspective, inflation has cost North Carolina residents $11,800 annually, the equivalent of over 3 1/2 years’ worth of grocery expenses.
Many necessities, including utilities or food, have seen prices rise even faster than the overall average for all products and services. Monthly gasoline expenses in North Carolina and the rest of the South Atlantic region have increased from $133 to $191, a jump of over 44%, since Biden and Harris took office.
For those who can still afford to buy and fuel a car in today’s world of sky-high prices, the pain doesn’t stop there. Car insurance has also become astronomically more expensive—up 55% to $156 per month on average.
And while some North Carolinians may opt out of driving and resign themselves to walking or using public transit, they still need somewhere to live. Here again, the financial pain is acute, with the average rent and mortgage cost in the South Atlantic up 28% from $1,431 to $1,825 since the start of 2021.
But despite the mounting cost of profligate government spending on Tar Heel State residents, Gov. Roy Cooper is doubling down on the madness, taking a page out of the Biden-Harris playbook with his proposed biennial state budget that includes a $50 billion deficit.
The last thing North Carolina taxpayers need is more government spending and debt thrown onto their backs, especially as they struggle to recover from Hurricane Helene, without much help from federal authorities.
This article originally appeared in The Washington Times.
