I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Friday, April 15th.

The new inflation number out last week showed consumer prices jumped by more than 8% compared to March of last year.

That's the biggest year-to-year increase for any month in about 40 years.

And that's on top of prices rising almost that fast in the several months before,

as all of you probably know.

So this is hitting people hard.

And it's regressive in that wealthier people can absorb the price increases and not give up important things, more than less wealthy people, obviously. And it's politically daunting for the Democrats because they're the party in power. So many people will tend to blame or credit them for whatever's going on.

Here's Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida trying to make political hay out of that on YouTube recently.

Inflation is out of control. People know it. Even if you got a raise, they got wiped out by inflation.

If you have a small business, you have to raise prices. That means you're losing customers.

It threatens to wipe you out.

That's what's happening in the real world.

And remember, Joe Biden said we didn't have inflation.

Then they said this was transitory and it was going to pass. And now it continues to linger. It continues to hurt people. And they don't do anything about it. Instead, they want to focus on all kinds of radical left-wing, crazy, woke stuff they want to fight over.

They cause the inflation, and they're ignoring it.

Senator Marco Rubio with his... on all kinds of radical left-wing, crazy, woke stuff that want to fight over. They cause the inflation, and they're ignoring it.

Senator Marco Rubio with his spin.

The Democrats, of course, do not actually say they've caused inflation or are ignoring it.

Here's President Biden speaking on Tuesday.

I'm doing everything within my power by executive orders to bring down the price and address

the Putin price hike. In fact, we've already made progress since March inflation data was collected.

Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank, none of it should hinge on whether a dictator

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