As the national inflation rate has hit a record high in the last 40 years, a US Republican Senator said at her recent 99 County Tour event in Guthrie County the federal government appears to be the problem. 

Senator Joni Ernst says issues at the pocket book are very important to Iowans and that is the number one problem going on in the nation. She says this issue stems from a lot of government spending. 

“So we need to slow down on the federal level of spending and just really focus on local solutions.”

Many Democrats have argued that the record high inflation has come from the war in Ukraine and they have laid blame on Russian President of Russia Vladmair Putin for price increases in the United States. Senator Ersnt believes the American people are not buying this argument. 

“Iowans are really smart about this. They say what’s been going on with the federal government. They’re really concerned about federal level spending. They know that that is coming from policy decisions out of Washington, D.C.. Obviously, the war in Ukraine, yeah, it has contributed a little bit. But overall, we were starting to see inflation well before what they’re calling the Putin price hikes.”

Ernst mentioned that the federal government’s spending packages to help Americans during the pandemic made sense but excessive dollars spent after that did not.