CNBC’s Kernen Spars with Biden Advisor After Rosy Economic Outlook: ‘That’s a Pretty Picture That You’ve Painted’

CNBC’s Joe Kernen pushed back on the “pretty picture” White House economic advisor Heather Boushey painted during a Monday appearance on the network.

Appearing on Squawk Box, Boushey touted positive progress in the economy until Kernen jumped in with his own reality check.

“The stock market obviously has all these things wrong,” Kernen said. “That’s a pretty picture that you’ve painted, but it seems like mortgage rates have doubled in the last year, gas prices are still up, probably 60 to 70 percent from where they were before the president took office, inflation’s running at 8.3 percent, 40 year highs —”

“Gas prices have come down phenomenally, Joe,” Bouchey interjected. “You cannot deny that.”

After some crosstalk, Kernen pointed out that gas prices were “two and change” when President Joe Biden entered office.

Bouchey pointed out that gas price hikes can be blamed on a “geopolitical crisis” that “upended” oil markets. According to AAA, the average U.S. gas price sits at approximately $3.67, up from $3.19 a year ago.

“If you’re going to blame everything on the pandemic for inflation, then you’ve got to acknowledge that reopening after the pandemic is why we just got back to basically the job that we had before the pandemic, that 10 million just got us back to even,” Kernen shot back.

Bouchey stood her ground, arguing we are “on a better path,” but acknowledged inflation woes.

“It is true that inflation is higher now than it was before, but it’s also true that we’ve seen some signs of abatement in the past couple of months and that we’re doing everything we can to get that back down,” she said.

Kernen also recently sparred with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on the economy, accusing the White House official of sticking “to the script” with his positive spin on the economy.

Watch above via CNBC