Skyrocketing inflation is forcing Americans to dig deeper into their wallets to buy groceries and fill up their gas tanks.
US Congressmen David Kustoff, who represents West Tennessee, slammed the Biden administration for causing the economic mess on Wake Up Memphis Thursday.
Here is a rush transcript of his conversation with KWAM morning show host Tim Van Horn.Tim Van Horn: Joining us this morning, representing the great eighth District right here in West Tennessee, it is our congressman, David Kustoff Congressman. Happy Thursday. How are you doing, sir?
Rep. David Kustoff: Hey, Tim, good morning. Happy Thursday to you and thanks for having me on.
Van Horn: Of course, we had National Agriculture Day earlier this week. Inflation, the last time we talked about this, you know, it was getting worse and worse. Seems like that’s the case. What are you seeing at ground level?
Kustoff: So, you know, when I’m around the 15 counties in the West Western District of Tennessee, the eighth Congressional District, the inflation, probably far and away, is the most important thing that I hear about issues. Tim, it’s just expensive to live in Joe Biden’s America. I mean, that’s the bottom line. And you think about it, I really want to make this comparison because you think about where we were. Even though we were in a pandemic a year and a half ago before Biden became president and where we are now and the cost of gas, the cost of food, the cost of buying a car, a refrigerator, whatever you want to buy. Everything is a lot more expensive. Yes. And the fact of the matter is that I deal with Democrats in Washington every day. People are not hearing solutions from Biden, from Chuck Schumer, from Nancy Pelosi about what the plan is to try to bring everything back down to levels that people can afford to live. We went from being in a really strong economy a year and a half ago to where we are now. And these are real problems. You think back, you can remember this. I can remember this. Ben might not remember this, but James Carville, 30 years ago talked about, is the economy stupid when he was trying to characterize that, that presidential election in 1992. That’s what it boils down to. Look, people are concerned about crime. People are concerned about the border and border security. Obviously, a lot of concerns about what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine. But Tim, right now, it all comes back to people’s pocketbooks.Van Horn: Indeed. And you said you’re not hearing solutions all around D.C. Are you starting to maybe hear from the other side of the aisle any frustration in this? I know for the moment and hopefully, things change, you know, at the turn of 2023. The Republicans are in the minority in both chambers of Congress. Are you starting to hear maybe some frustrations from Democrats at what’s happening in the White House with this?
Kustoff: Yeah. So a couple of things. One is they look at the polling just like Republicans, look at the polling. And if you look at what they call the congressional generic poll, which is a nationwide poll, do you want to have a Republican congressman or Democratic congressman? Republicans are actually up. That does not happen very often because these polls lean towards Democrats. In other words, they oversample Democrats so that the Democrats see the writing on the wall. And yet they really are concerned. If I said a year ago and I talked about it on your show when the Democrats were trying to push that a year ago in March, this big American Rescue Plan, the $1.9 trillion in spending, I said a lot of my other cohorts, the patriots said, ‘if that’s passed, we’re going to see rampant inflation around the country.’ Even Larry Summers, you know, former Clinton officials said, you cannot spend this type of money without incurring substantial inflation. We see it. And so what Biden comes back and says, now this, I understand no logic to it. But what Biden comes back and says is if you pass, build back better, whatever they call it now one point 7.5 trillion dollars, that’ll help take care of inflation. Now again, makes no sense, it’s not logical. But people are not hearing. They’re just not hearing any answers from Biden and from Democratic leaders.
Van Horn: It seems like a year ago, congressman, that the those that doubted that this would happen, continued to use the mantra Inflation is just the boogeyman. It’s not something that’s really going to happen. And now we are just, I mean, we’re living in it now. I mean, it’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s it is. It is our life. Congressman David Kustoff joins us this morning on Wake Up Memphis.Listen to the entire conversation here:
