Simpson talks inflation, gas prices, dams and why he gives the Biden administration an ‘F’

#eastidahonews #mikesimpson #interview

IDAHO FALLS — Congressman Mike Simpson of Idaho’s 2nd Congressional District stopped by EastIdahoNews.com Wednesday to answer questions about inflation, gas prices, the economy, breaching Idaho dams and his view on President Biden’s administration thus far.

Simpson, a Republican, is running for his fifth term against Democrat Wendy Norman.

Here is a lightly edited transcript of Simpson’s conversation with EastIdahoNews.com reporter Nate Eaton.

NATE EATON, EASTIDAHONEWS.COM: The number one concern I’m hearing from people in eastern Idaho is about the economy and inflation. I was meeting with a restaurant owner just an hour ago in Idaho Falls. She said the price of pork a year or so ago was around $2. Then it shot up to $6. Now it’s around $4. How do we deal with this?

REP. MIKE SIMPSON: Two things. One is gas prices. We have to make ourselves energy independent again, which we were two years ago. When Biden was first elected, his first action was to declare war on the oil industry. And guess what? Prices of oil went up. And that’s what’s happened with gas prices. That’s driving some of the inflation.

The other thing is the incredible amount of spending that the Democratic majority has been doing over the last couple of years. They’ve spent like $7 trillion, in addition to our regular appropriation bills, on infrastructure, on the CHIPS bill, on the Inflation Reduction Act – just add it all up. It’s an enormous input of cash into the market and that causes inflation. You have too many dollars chasing too few goods.

EATON: So what happens next? How do you get that under control and will prices go back down?

SIMPSON: Well, I think we can get prices back down if we can get ourselves back on (the) all of the above energy policy that reduces our reliance on foreign oil and OPEC.

Don’t you find it kind of strange that the first action (of Pres. Biden) is punishing oil producers in the United States, and then we’re going to go beg Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to produce more oil? I mean, that’s just strange, because we do it better in this country than anywhere else, and more environmentally safe in this country than anywhere else in the world. So why wouldn’t we use our own energy in this country? We’re the Saudi Arabia of natural gas, and yet getting wells drilled and that type of stuff is almost impossible nowadays.

You do that by getting control of your budget and spending less money. One of the challenges we’re going to have is people have gotten used to all this spending that’s going on – whether it’s trying to relieve student loans and all that kind of stuff.

We are going to have a time bringing the spending down, which is what we’re going to have to do. So I’ll tell you next session, if the Republicans take majority, it’s gonna be a tough time, because we’re gonna have to make some tough choices. But they’ve got to be made and we’ve got to get our budget back under control.

Read the rest of the interview at eastidahonews.com.

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