Mere days after President Joe Biden boasted during his State of the Union address that inflation is dropping, the Labor Department revealed that the consumer price index rose by 3.2% in the year ending in February, well past economist expectations and up from 3.1% in January. Worse still, both headline CPI and core CPI, that is, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure sans the volatile categories of food and energy, rose by a staggering 0.4% in February. That’s a 4.8% inflation rate annualized, or more than twice the Fed’s maximum 2% target annually.

The Fed’s most recent monetary tightening campaign was the fastest in some 40 years, bringing the federal funds rate from virtually zero to over 5% as it succeeded in bringing CPI inflation from the near-double digits to 3.2% today. But unlike the Paul Volcker era of the ’80s, when the central bank was working in conjunction with disinflationary fiscal policy from the White House, the Fed’s current campaign has been and continues to be diametrically opposed to Biden’s agenda. And now, as inflation across the board threatens to creep back up, the president has announced a budget proposal with a galling $1.8 trillion deficit for the next fiscal year.