National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said Wednesday that the best way to “address” rising prices amid the inflation spike would be to pass President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” social spending bill and continue addressing supply chain bottlenecks as they arise.
Deese joined reporters at Wednesday’s White House press briefing to offer a defense of the latest consumer price index report, which showed inflation over 12 months jumping to 7% in December, a 40-year high. He was asked by CBS what steps the administration is taking “to help families pay for that food” amid nationwide food shortages.
He listed a number of items Biden had logged the previous year, including the American Rescue Plan, and claimed the administration is “going to keep focused on those ways that we can address the typical pocketbook issues that the American people face.”
Deese added that the “components of the Build Back Better plan would directly address those issues by providing a tax cut to families directly in their pocketbook” would “free up a lot of resources to invest in other monthly needs.”
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CBS pressed Deese on “anything new” the administration “can do to help with the food situation,” which Deese answered by calling Biden’s past economic actions “historic.”
“Our central economic legislative priority is getting those elements of Build Back Better in place, and part of the urgency of that is to address precisely the challenges that you are identifying,” he added. “Beyond that, we are looking at ways that we can unstick elements of the supply chain that may be getting in the way of, for example, physical product getting to market.”
