The national inflation rate has hit highs that haven’t been seen in over 40 years.

U.S. Senator Charles Grassley puts some blame on President Joe Biden for his policies on energy, which Grassley believes 50-percent of the hike in inflation from last month is directly related to the increased cost of energy from Biden. He also blames supply chain issues for driving up inflation. However, he doesn’t believe spending more money at the federal level will help reduce inflation.

“As long as (Senator Joe) Manchin is of the opinion that Democrats should not use reconciliation to pass (Biden’s) Build Back Better, and it takes 60 votes for everything else to get through the United States Senate. I don’t think we have to worry about feeding the fires of inflation with another $4.5 million of spending, that would be very, very irresponsible.” 

Grassley thinks some of the inflation crisis could have been avoided had the Federal Reserve started increasing interest rates one year ago instead of now, but he says the ball is in the Federal Reserve’s court.

“But I think it’s all in the Feds’ hands, the extent of which we get inflation under control. And that’s one of only two responsibilities they have, fighting inflation is one of them. And then the other thing is they increased their balance sheet from $4 trillion to $9 trillion during the pandemic. The next step is, and I think now I’ve been reading that they might be doing this, gradually decrease their balance sheet.”     

The current inflation rate for March was at 8.5-percent.