Fox News Anchors Confront Biden Economic Adviser on Inflation: Isn’t It Time to ‘Pivot?’

Fox News anchors confronted Biden economic adviser Jared Bernstein on Thursday over inflation.

The consumer price index, an inflationary measure, was 8.2 percent in September, a 0.1 percentage point decrease from the previous month but still high. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the report on Thursday.

Annual inflation via BLS just out:

42.9% airline fares
33.1% utility gas
30.5% eggs
18.2% gasoline
17.2% chicken
15.7% coffee
15.2% milk
14.7% bread
10.1% furniture
9.2% vegetables
8.2% all items
8.2% fruit
8.1% ham
7.6% women apparel
7.2% used cars
6.7% rent
3.7% men apparel

— Ryan Struyk (@ryanstruyk) October 13, 2022

America’s Newsroom co-anchor Bill Hemmer noted that core inflation, which excludes energy and food, “is the highest we’ve seen since 1982.” He asked Bernstein, “Is it time for this White House and the Biden administration to pivot on its economic policies?” Bernstein answered “no.”

“What we have is the White House, the Federal Reserve, we are acutely aware of the pressures that this causes on American families and budgets,” said Bernstein. “The president started out this morning by talking about how Americans are squeezed by the cost of living and they didn’t need this report to remind them of that but that’s certainly in the report.”

Hemmer interjected, “Just to be clear, I asked you that question and you said no. So are you saying no change in policy?”

Bernstein explained:

The policies that we’re doing to help mitigate and ease price pressures are having effect. So, for example, look at the supply side of the economy. Supply chains, shipping costs, air freight costs are significantly down. Goods are getting to ship-to-shelf at the same level they did pre-pandemic. And now going into the report, the one that came out this morning and look at goods inflation, it was flat if you take out energy. Now, you mentioned that energy prices went up in September. In fact, according to this month’s CPI energy prices fell 2 percent in September.

Hemmer interrupted Bernstein and clarified that he was asking about core inflation.

Bernstein admitted that “nobody is denying your fundamental point which is this is a real squeeze on family budgets.”

Moments later, co-host Dana Perino asked Bernstein about President Joe Biden telling CNN anchor Jake Tapper that there won’t be a recession but that if there is one it’ll be small.

“I don’t think there will be a recession,” said Biden in the interview, which aired on Tuesday. “If it is, it’ll be a very slight recession.”

Perino asked if the Council of Economic Advisers, which Bernstein serves on, gave Biden “some data that backs” that the United States could experience a small recession.

“That’s a fairly common view among market analysts. What the president said was that a recession is far from inevitable and I think what he was referring to there is the strength of our job market,” said Bernstein. “Look, you just don’t have a recession when you have a 3.5 percent unemployment rate adding hundreds of thousands of jobs per month. That’s just completely inconsistent with recession.”

Watch above via Fox News.

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