Multiple Democrat lawmakers are quietly telling allies worried about Vice President Kamala Harris’s controversial grocery price-control plan that the proposal will die in Congress, Politico revealed.
After economists pushed back on Harris’s “Soviet-style” plan to centrally administer price controls on food in her first policy-focused speech on August 16, one anonymous Democrat told the outlet that it was a “lofty goal.”
“I honestly still don’t know how this would work,” a second lawmaker said.
WATCH — Klain: A Price Gouging Law Like Harris’s Proposal “Was Not Going to Solve Inflation”:
According to an insider familiar with the White House, Harris’s plan does not address the inflation problem effectively.
“If we had a good tool we’d definitely have used it,” they told Politico.
The outlet interviewed six lawmakers and five aides under the condition of anonymity — who all confirmed that Congressional Democrats have been privately telling critics that the price gouging plan is not feasible.
Data from the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that grocery prices jumped 22 percent from January 2021 — when President Joe Biden and Harris first took office — to July 2024.
Another Democrat on Capitol Hill brushed off complaints from conservatives, saying “they call everything communism.”
However, a food industry official with knowledge of the proposal said, “It’s not a serious policy.”
“I’m sure it polls well,” they added. “But it’s an obvious effort to deflect blame from her administration on inflation.”
The Biden-Harris administration has falsely claimed that grocery prices have gone down, with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre telling MSNBC in June that “eggs and milk” have gone down, along with gasoline:
KARINE JEAN-PIERRE:
“There were grocery things that were up — it has gone down!”
(Grocery prices are up 20%+ since Biden took office)
“We saw gas prices go down!”
(Gas is up 44%+ since Biden took office) pic.twitter.com/G5jB6PV7Hg
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 25, 2024
Another Democrat insider told Politico the rollout of the plan was botched, partially due to a Washington Post op-ed by columnist Catherine Rampell, who wrote, “It’s hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is.”
Rampell, a CNN commentator who writes liberal opinions and puff-pieces on Harris’s family, called the price-gouging proposal a “sweeping set of government-enforced price controls across every industry, not only food.”
“Supply and demand would no longer determine prices or profit levels. Far-off Washington bureaucrats would. The FTC would be able to tell, say, a Kroger in Ohio the acceptable price it can charge for milk,” she wrote.