With Thanksgiving and Black Friday in the rearview mirror, American families are now preparing for the Christmas season, buying gifts and planning trips with family and friends. Despite our efforts to keep the holiday cheer, there will be a looming elephant in the room: inflation. Currently at 7.75 percent, there seems to be no stopping the price hikes, let alone the shipping delays.
On top of that, average gas prices are still around $3.50-3.60 (and likely to rise again). Many individuals are dipping into their savings accounts to deal with these price hikes, and the government has still not solved the baby formula shortage—a problem it created—yet news outlets have deemed it too unimportant to continue to report on.
In order to combat these woes, legacy media has come up with countless articles and how-to videos, educating Americans on how they can stretch their dollars. Earlier this year, Bloomberg published an article recommending that families making under $300k a year should switch out meats for vegetables like lentils stating: “Though your palate may not be used to it, tasty meat substitutes include vegetables (where prices are up a little over 4%, or lentils and beans which are up about 9%)...” The author also recommends taking the bus instead of driving, not buying food in bulk, and forgoing pets’ medical bills. This seems perfectly logical; why halt an ever expanding bureaucracy from printing billions of dollars or raising the federal interest rate when the average American can contribute by tightening their belts, and buying less for themselves and their families?
As the Director of Research of the Economic Policy Institute Josh Biven has stated, “...Inflation is largely a global, geopolitical phenomenon that is just not under the Biden administration’s control…”
Then let’s see what steps the federal government and the Biden Administration have been taking in order to contribute to the alleviation of this global phenomenon of inflation, and in turn help Americans with pricing at home.
‘It’s OK, We Have a Budget’
With the war in the Ukraine, labor strikes, social unrest, and, yes, still Covid on the tongues of many world leaders, the Biden Administration has taken on the herculean responsibility of providing/continuing foreign aid to various countries with the hopes of mending trade relations and to help get the globe back to some sense of economic normalcy.
In fiscal year 2022, the total amount of foreign obligations the federal government committed to disburse throughout the world was $44 billion dollars—a $9 billion increase from the previous year. The Biden government is distributing taxpayer dollars to many regions and for many purposes: from humanitarian aid, to military funding, to green initiatives.
Let’s focus on some of the salient contributions.
One would assume that after the August 15, 2021 takeover of Kabul, the US would halt aid to a country now dominated by the Taliban. However, on top of the billions in military and transportation equipment left behind, the deaths of 13 US service members, and the countless women and young girls now being forcibly married and raped by militants, Biden has made sure to continue funding ‘humanitarian aid’ to Afghanistan in the form of $3.79 billion for fiscal year 2022.
Unfortunately, all federal information regarding the exact types of projects or initiatives these funds are reportedly supporting has been redacted in accordance with the exceptions outlined in the Foreign Aid Transparency Act of 2016—ironic to say the least. What we do know is that said monies are allotted for emergency disaster relief and “basic education.”
One would assume that after the August 15, 2021 takeover of Kabul, the US would halt aid to a country now dominated by the Taliban. However, on top of the billions in military and transportation equipment left behind, the deaths of 13 US service members, and the countless women and young girls now being forcibly married and raped by militants, Biden has made sure to continue funding ‘humanitarian aid’ to Afghanistan in the form of $3.79 billion for fiscal year 2022.