House Speaker Nancy Pelosi advised Democratic candidates to focus on “kitchen table” issues and reducing inflation as her party heads into the final two weeks before the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
“The upcoming election will be decided at the kitchen table, as America’s families determine who they trust to fight for them in this challenging moment,” Pelosi said in a letter Saturday addressed to fellow lawmakers. “We must communicate a clear, convincing message on why families are experiencing higher prices.”
Pelosi said House Democrats should tell voters what they have already done to ease the burden of inflation and what they’ll do if they return to power in the next Congress. The opposition party has a historical advantage in midterm elections and a recent Gallup Poll suggests Republicans lead Democrats by 11 percentage points on the question of which political party voters trust most to tackle pressing economic concerns.
Pelosi, who is serving her second term as speaker, said Republicans “mismanaged” the response to COVID-19, “stealing jobs, shuttering small businesses, strangling supply chains” and that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated a “global scourge of inflation.”
“Greedy corporations and special interests have sought to take advantage of the crisis: stealing from families by raising prices to obscene levels,” she said.
In contrast, Pelosi said her party has passed legislation that would reduce the cost of living for Americans, including the Inflation Reduction Act, the American Rescue Plan, an infrastructure law and the CHIPS and Science Act.
Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told Bloomberg News in an interview this week that the American Rescue Plan, which was signed into law early in the Biden administration, was too large, though he downplayed its effect on inflation. Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury Secretary, has criticized the size of that plan and warned against blaming inflation on “corporate greed.”
U.S. inflation gauges have increased this year at the fastest rate in 40 years, affecting everything from gasoline prices to restaurant sales and prompting the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates to the highest level since 2007.
