Sunshine Sentinel

With national spending at the highest it has been in decades, some economists fear the worst for the country is yet to come.

Jack A. Chambless, an economics professor at Valencia College, believes American's can expect to see the increase in prices of everything to only continue to go up. 

"Inflation is a serious concern for most economists," Chambless told the Sunshine Sentinel. "We are seeing severe shortages all over the U.S. and shortages on a large scale always lead to higher prices. The Federal Reserve Bank has shown no inclination to reign in the inflationary pressure we are already seeing. Americans can expect prices to rise faster than incomes over the next several months and perhaps into next year."blessings. 

Chambless said that for Florida, the national spending has been both a blessing and curse considering the most of spending for the state is on tourism. 

"The increase in federal spending is a benefit and a cost to Florida," he said. "Florida is a prime tourist destination so we can expect to see a surge in the demand for hotels and all tourist-related services as people allocate some of the stimulus spending towards vacations. The cost to Florida is that the extra $300 per week in unemployment benefits is making it very hard for businesses to find people willing to work as our economy grows."

According to a Congressional Budget Office report, if the current tax and spending laws don’t change by 2031, the U.S. debt will reach 107% of the gross domestic product, the highest level in U.S, history. The report also said that current federal debt held by the public, which was 100% of GPD at the end of fiscal year 2020, would reach 102% by the end of fiscal 2021.

Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), in a letter to his Congressional colleagues, said the national debt, currently stands at over $27 trillion and is amounting to over $225,000 per American household. He also stated that the increased federal spending over the past year has been driving a massive spike in inflation which is trickling down to cause a rise in cost of goods which affects the lowest income earning Americans. 

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the U.S. money supply has increased 40%. Before the period of high inflation in the 1970s, the money supply had increase by just 13%, according to The Federalist. A former Clinton administrator, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, warned that the United States could experience “inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation” with the most recent economic stimulus by President Joe Biden. 

National inflation is projected to rise more than 60% to 2.3% from a pre-COVID-19 low of 1.4%. Scott recommends that Congress to do everything within its power to reduce the inflation by decreasing spending and choosing not to raise the debt ceiling, according to his letter.

The majority of Americans, 83%, are tightening their budget because of inflation and 54% were "very concerned" about inflation in the nation, according to a Shopkick survey as reported by Forbes. 

The survey all shows that more than 90% of people noticed an increase in gas and groceries since Biden was sworn into office.