Gov. Ron DeSantis took a swipe at Vice President Kamala Harris' plan to slash skyrocketed food prices by banning price gouging as an outright "lie" that he says ignores the real issue of supply chain disruption and the "massive" amounts of printed and borrowed money. In other words, her policies will send the country "into a depression,"Gov. DeSantis worries.
"Supply chains are interrupted and there's massive amounts of printing money, which has had huge impacts," he said at a Bradenton press conference Friday morning, referring to the nation's $35.27 trillion debt, and the 2025 money print order valued at $83.2 billion to $113 billion. "Harris was there for this—she cast the vote for some of these major spending initiatives that really fueled inflation."
Harris, meanwhile, has pointed out that the U.S. inflation rate is hovering at 2.5%, the lowest it's been since March 2021. However, prices are still over 20% higher since the pandemic's onset in February 2020, which essentially means that prices are still inflating—just at a slower rate. Food costs, for example, have surged 20% under the Biden-Harris administration, though Harris says the culprit is corporate price gouging.
"That is a lie," DeSantis countered. "The reason why grocery prices have gone up is because of supply chain disruption from the Covid nonsense and the massive amounts of printing and borrowing of money. It's effectively like a major tax on people—it's just invisible."
The pandemic, later coupled with the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, caused a global supply chain crisis. Chemical supplies, automotive sector shipments, and technology distribution sharply dropped—disrupting consumer patterns and damaging various countries' economies. So, when the U.S. started to experience rocketed inflation, Harris in 2022 cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of the Inflation Reduction Act, which received zero GOP support. The $740 billion law was packaged as an investment in creating various jobs, lowering energy and medical costs, and cracking down on wealthy tax evaders, though Republicans have argued that it's a misnomer that actually increased inflation.
DeSantis, meanwhile, turned to the Federal Reserve on Wednesday cutting its key interest rate for the first time in four years to lower borrowing costs on everything from mortgages to credit cards, CNN reported. The Florida Governor, however, was skeptically hesitant to discuss the nation's economic future, even with the Fed's slashed rates.
Why? Because of Harris, he says.
"They've botched this from the beginning of Covid, and so they're kind of the reason we're in the mess, in addition to the Congress and the borrowing and spending." He said. To expound on the matter, "If you get someone like Harris [who] tries to tax unrealized gains, this country will go into a depression. You'd see a massive flight of capital out of the United States, and I think that would hurt our state in particular."
"It's a lunacy to say you're going to tax someone's investment before they've even realized a profit on it—they just have to cut a check," DeSantis said, referring to the Biden-Harris plan to tax unrealized capital gains on people who make over $100 million. These gains happen when a person's property, stock, or asset that they have yet to sell value increases. Under their plan, those worth over $100 million would be taxed 25% of that increase.
DeSantis thinks it's an "Orwellian" idea, largely painting the proposal as one that would apply to all Americans—not just the wealthy—and at an earlier press conference compared her economic plans to arson.
"Would you bring in the arsonist to put out the fire?" He questioned.
