Casey blames ‘scheming companies’ for rising prices – Pennsylvania

(The Center Square) – The inflationary pressures squeezing taxpayers’ wallets are coming from “scheming corporations,” according to Bob Casey Jr., U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania.

In a five-minute speech on the closing night of the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago, the three-term senator said rising prices for food and other everyday goods were due to corporate greed.

“The corporations say their prices have gone up because their costs have gone up,” Casey said, reflecting on the $15 price increase for diapers over the past six months. “They're selling you a lie. It's in the bag with the diapers. Prices have gone up because these corporations are plotting to drive them up.”

This news comes just a day after the U.S. Labor Department admitted to overestimating the number of new jobs created by the end of the year by 818,000 in March, setting off alarm bells about the health of the economy and the Federal Reserve's impending decision to cut or raise lending rates.

Despite revisions, the figure is a third lower than the original estimate of 2.9 million jobs, raising eyebrows among critics who worry about whether Vice President Kamala Harris will be able to get a handle on massive inflation spikes under the Biden administration.

A recent report from the Bureau of Economic Analysis found that Americans' personal savings rate fell to 3.4% in June, down from nearly 20% in January 2021. Real disposable income per capita also shrank from 14% to 0.51%.

Data released in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's quarterly report showed that credit card balances rose to a record $1.14 trillion in the second quarter of 2024. Household debt also reached $17.8 trillion, while delinquency rates on credit cards, auto loans and mortgages also rose.

However, Casey said on Wednesday that Harris and Democratic lawmakers would improve the situation in the interests of taxpayers by supporting legislation to stop gouging on food prices and imposing higher fines on companies that capitalize on crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Most companies are good companies,” he said. “It's the food companies that sit behind the supermarkets, the faceless wholesalers that exploit families at the checkout. That's greedflation.”

Casey, who is running for a fourth term in November against his Republican challenger Dave McCormick, also praised Harris' support for a policy to lower the price of insulin to $35 a month, a victory over “big pharma.”