Al Franken Hits Democrats Over Inflation Bill: ‘So Little Of it is Kicking In’
Former Democratic Senator Al Franken is less than impressed with his party’s response to increased inflation ahead of November’s midterm elections.
On a recent episode of his show The Al Franken Podcast, the eponymous host spoke about the slow trickle of the Inflation Reduction Act, and how it could potentially hurt Democrats come November.
“And I gotta say, I’m a little stressed about, about the midterms. Things have not been trending in the right direction of late,” he said.
While Franken pointed out that Republicans have been slow to offer solutions to inflation, he argued that the Democrats own solution — the Inflation Reduction Act — was moving far too slow for voters to recognize.
“Americans are rightly concerned about inflation. Gas prices are trending back up, rent, food, it’s hard to care about anything else when you don’t know if you’re gonna make it month to month or even week to week. It not like Republicans have offered any solutions. Of course. The unfortunately named Inflation reduction Act — unfortunately, mainly because so little it has kicked in and we are not seeing inflation reduced,” he said.
Franken did praise the climate initiatives within the Inflation Reduction Act that Democrats were able to pass, but admitted voters care more about the impact to their day-to-day lives.
“A climate bill finally, $370 billion to address that existential crisis, which is projected to bring down our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 and projected to cut an average families annual energy costs by $1,100 a year. And there’s Medicare being able to negotiate with the pharmaceutical companies, which will bring down the cost of prescription drugs,” he said.
“Making profitable corporations pay a minimum of 15% on their income that pays for the climate mitigation and will reduce the size of our deficits, which theoretically will help reduce inflation. But no one’s seeing any of that. Of course,” Franken added.
The former Senator also criticized those trying to spin America’s inflation numbers by comparing them to other countries.
“Americans don’t care that inflation is a global problem — that the inflation rate is actually higher in almost every other developed country. Democrats are not gonna win a lot of votes saying, ‘Oh yeah, you know what the inflation rate is in Hungary, 11%,'” he said.
“‘Oh, I didn’t realize that. When my family’s having peanut butter sandwiches again for dinner, I’ll bring up Hungary’s rate of inflation,'” he joked.
Franken still expressed hope that the overturning of Roe v. Wade will drive Democratic voters to the polls despite the state of the economy.
“So things have been trending badly. I still believe the Dobbs decision will drive turnout. We seem to be seeing that, for example, in Georgia at least. I think that’s what’s happening there. But I’ve been a little down because I hadn’t liked the trends I’d been seeing,” Franken concluded.
Listen above via The Al Franken Podcast.
