A federal lawmaker recently told members of the Williamsport/Lycoming Chamber of Commerce and their guests that one of the biggest drivers of inflation over the past four years has been excessive spending by the administration coming out of the pandemic recovery.

Higher prices of consumer goods (milk, bread, eggs, gasoline, fuel) were set into motion because of the excessive amount of spending done during recovery from COVID-19, said U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Dallas, who is on the House Finance Services and House Committee on Small Business. Meuser is focused on getting former President Donald J. Trump elected on Nov. 5.

Meuser described inflation as “too many dollars chasing too few goods,” and then offered for chamber members his rationale based on looking back at recent history.

“There has been an unbelievable amount of spending,” he said, adding the “big mistake was the administration’s spending excessively during a nationwide recovery from the pandemic in 2020.”

“Even Democratic economists said ‘This is going to cause inflation,'” Meuser told the chamber members.

“The Biden-Harris administration is directly responsible for skyrocketing inflation, driven by reckless spending, an attack on American energy, and policies that pushed interest rates higher,” Meuser has been quoted saying.

Republicans and Democrats candidates leading up to the election on Nov. 5 also acknowledge the prices remain too high and there have been causes such as price gouging tactics by large manufacturers and the overall impact it has on inflation for American consumers.

Offering the chamber members a brief historical perspective and looking at the numbers, Meuser said when he took office in 2019, the national debt was $19.5 trillion dollars. When the nation’s economy went into shut down mode, one that was a $23 trillion economy, the nation lost about $5 trillion from businesses closed and the economy coming to a standstill.

Still, looking at the rate of inflation in 2021 – it was “non-existent, around 1.2 to 1.3 %,” Meuser said.

When the government added Coronavirus aid packages, it used $5 trillion dollars of taxpayer money or money in the U.S. Treasury, he said.

“In doing so, we removed that $5 trillion from the economy,” he said.