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The participants in Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate offered proposals for addressing inflation, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis taking aim at the Federal Reserve and Sen. Tim Scott bringing up an oil pipeline blocked by the Biden administration.
DeSantis said he would trash the executive orders and regulations tied to “Bidenomics” on his first day in the Oval Office to “give the economy breathing room.”
“I’m also going to rein in the Federal Reserve. They have helped create, with their reckless monetary policy, what we have faced since the COVID-19 pandemic. They botched it,” the governor said. “The Fed should focus on stable prices. They are not an economic central planner for the American people.”
The U.S. central bank currently has a dual mandate of keeping inflation low and maintaining full employment, but a number of GOP presidential hopefuls have called for changing that.
See: Here’s how the Republican presidential candidates say they’ll whip inflation
Scott said the first thing he would do as president would be to back the Keystone XL pipeline — which had its permit revoked by President Joe Biden in January 2021 — in order to “start seeing resources flow.”
The South Carolina senator also promised to “make sure that there’s certainty and predictability” for those with permits to drill for oil
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Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he saw eye to eye with Scott on the importance of focusing on energy
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policy to bring down prices.
“Absolutely energy is the key to this, because it drives every one of those other prices down,” Christie said.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy made a similar point, calling for increasing the supply of energy to lower prices and, in fact, boosting “the supply of everything.”
“Increase the supply of housing,” Ramaswamy said. “People don’t talk about this within the Republican Party. The land-use restrictions are constricting the supply of housing. That’s making housing more expensive for ordinary Americans across this country.”
And see: ‘We’ve become a party of losers’: Vivek Ramaswamy blasts GOP ‘establishment’ in Miami debate
Plus: Nikki Haley stomps on Vivek Ramaswamy’s ‘3-inch heels’ comment during Republican debate
