PHILADELPHIA — President Joe Biden on Friday continued to blame both the pandemic and Russian President Vladimir Putin for high gas prices and sought to blunt arguments about federal spending contributing to inflation.
“(People) didn’t spend money on leisure activities, so they wanted to spend it on other things, on hard goods, home improvements, televisions, additions to their homes, the very products that slowed down by disruption in the supply chain because there weren’t people cutting two-by-fours because of COVID,” Biden said during a visit to the House Democratic issues conference.
Conceding he was “preaching to the choir,” the president also said, “The second big reason for inflation is Vladimir Putin. From the moment he put his over 150,000 troops on the Ukrainian border, the price of gasoline in January went up 75 cents.”
