Inflation Report Will Help GOP Kill Biden Bill, Moore Says
Inflation Report Will Help GOP Kill Biden Bill, Moore Says
(Bloomberg) -- Former Trump economic adviser Stephen Moore said rising inflation will help the Republican effort to derail President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion tax and spending plan.
“Inflation is really resonating with people,” said Moore, one of the leaders of a coalition of conservative groups trying to stop the legislation that Democrats are moving through Congress. “I give us a 50-50 chance now of killing this bill.”
The government reported this week that the Consumer Price Index in October increased 6.2% from a year ago, the largest annualized gain in decades. Moore said that this was giving the coalition, which counts about 60 conservative organizations as members, momentum.
The coalition’s leaders also include Larry Kudlow and Brooke Rollins, who also advised former President Donald Trump.
Moore cited concerns raised by West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, a pivotal vote in the Senate, after the CPI report.
The group is focusing advertisements on West Virginia and Arizona, home of another Democratic senator, Kyrsten Sinema, who with Manchin has forced Biden and fellow Democrats to shrink the size of the bill. Both are crucial to its passage in the 50-50 Senate.
“Whatever the House does, Manchin and Sinema have an absolutely veto over what goes in this bill,” Moore said on Friday.
He added that the coalition has been working with House and Senate GOP leadership over the last 10 weeks to coordinate messaging against Biden’s bill.
“Our strategy has been delay, delay, delay,” he said. “The more the public finds out about this bill, the less popular it becomes.”
A Monmouth University poll released Nov. 10 found that support for the Biden agenda has held steady at 62% of the public, though only 26% of Republicans back it.
Moore argued that provisions in the Biden bill such as the expanded child tax credit and Obamacare subsidies will tend to discourage work and lead to the loss of some 6 million to 8 million workers. That loss of labor would tend to drive up prices, he argued.
A spokesman for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the tax and spending proposal would not worsen inflation.
“The Build Back Better Act is one of the most significant pieces of legislation to lower families’ costs in a generation, and not only is it fully paid for, it actually reduces the deficit,” said the spokesman, Henry Connelly. “Price increases are all the more reason we should act decisively to lower the expenses that weigh heaviest on working families — from child care to prescription drugs to housing — by passing the Build Back Better Act.”
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