On Friday’s broadcast of “CNN Tonight,” U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) responded to House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn’s (D-SC) statement that “all of us knew” the American Rescue Plan would increase prices by stating that he didn’t vote for the bill knowing it would cause inflation but refused to directly say Clyburn’s assertion that Democrats knew the bill would cause inflation is wrong and stated that there weren’t a lot of good options, and “we had to get that done. I don’t regret doing it.”
After playing a clip of Clyburn saying that, “all of us are concerned about these rising costs. And all of us knew this would be the case when we put in place this recovery program. Any time you put more money into the economy, prices tend to rise.” Host Jake Tapper asked, “You voted for the bill. Did you vote for it knowing that it would push prices up?”
Ryan responded, “Yeah, no, not at all. And I think right now we need a tax cut. I mean, we were experiencing a pandemic. We did a number of rescue packages when President Trump was in and then again with President Biden. We had to rescue the economy, and we had to make some significant investments. We are moving into a phase now and we have to return the supply chain. We’ve got to stop the price gouging [that] we know is happening out there, some of the big corporations are doing it. But we’ve got to move the supply chain back, that was the CHIPS Act, that was the infrastructure bill, that was the Inflation Reduction Act. For 30 or 40 years, Jake, the corporations, the wealthiest people in this country shipped our jobs overseas, sold out the American workers and we have hollowed out communities. And then a pandemic hits and we realize we’re not making anything in the United States anymore, we’ve got to bring it back. So, that’s the effort moving forward and I think in Ohio there’s a clear contrast, a guy like me who wants to take that issue on, take on the corporate interests, take on China, and move the manufacturing back. You’ve got a guy like J.D. Vance who’s actually investing into China, making money off it, and shipping the products back here.”
Tapper then asked, “So, was Jim Clyburn wrong when he said that? You didn’t all know that putting money into the economy was going to cause inflation?”
Ryan answered, “Well, you’ve got to remember, we were coming out of the pandemic. You know, there were a lot of — there weren’t many good choices there. We needed to put some money into the economy. We had to rescue businesses, families, people were on unemployment, you had the economy locked up and the globe locked up. So, we had to get that done. I don’t regret doing it. What I’m saying now is give people a tax cut so that they can actually have some money in their pocket. That’s the solution.”
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