Voters hate inflation — but they would hate these GOP proposals to stop it even more: analyst

Inflation, driven to 40-year highs — not just in the United States, but around the whole world — has been one of the leading issues driving the last year of politics, including lawmakers' pitches to voters in the midterm elections, as voters find themselves paying more for everything.

President Joe Biden recently signed a landmark bill designed to boost energy supplies and cap health care costs, while Republicans are blaming the entire monetary situation on Democratic policies and asking voters to let them manage the economy.

But on Wednesday, writing for New York Magazine, Ed Kilgore laid out what Republicans are actually planning as a policy response to inflation — and warned that these policies will anger voters more than inflation itself ever did.

Specifically, everyone from House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is blaming inflation on "spending" — and signaling they want huge cuts to social programs, possibly including Social Security and Medicare, and even a threat to force the U.S. into default and destroy the creditworthiness of the debt altogether as a way of forcing Democrats to capitulate.

"It might seem strange that Republicans would be pivoting to a more aggressive agenda without holding the White House. But this is actually consistent with the strategy they have followed over the past three decades," wrote Kilgore. "Republicans are committed to scaling back the safety net. But they realize this agenda is toxically unpopular — even less popular than defunding the police, a policy Democrats have repudiated en masse. They could try to accomplish this through compromise — the previous two Democratic presidents showed some willingness to trade social-spending cuts for higher taxes on the rich. But higher taxes on the rich are completely verboten in the GOP. And so their strategy is to force Democratic presidents to sign spending cuts into law against their will."

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This sort of policy is wildly unpopular — and not just in the U.S. In a survey of 11 democracies around the world, Kilgore wrote: "Large majorities of citizens across all 11 countries say they would oppose their own government taking action to reduce consumer prices if it means that 'rent and mortgage payments increase'; 'taxes paid by people like you increase'; or that 'unemployment increases.' The only consequence that global citizens are willing to stomach to reduce inflation is 'rich people pay more taxes' — an idea backed by two-thirds of people across the 11 countries and something [British Prime Minister] Liz Truss’s team should have relayed before the unveiling of her trickle-down economic plans."

Ultimately, wrote Kilgore, Democrats need a winning message to highlight all of this and fight back.

"Democrats cannot be the custodians of the status quo," he concluded. "Instead of boasting about signs of progress or discussing macroeconomic statistics, Democrats should recognize that the living standards of wage earners have been deteriorating for years and focus on those who are grinding them down by both holding down wages and boosting prices: rich and powerful corporations."