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The ever-shrinking consumer cushion from Marketplace. I'm Sabrina Bennishear in New York.

We know the size of the U.S. economy grew faster in the

first quarter of this year. Meanwhile, today, oil is at $110 a barrel and gas is at $4.46 a gallon,

on average. So how much of our economic growth is just everyone paying more for energy?

Julia Cornado is founder of macro policy perspectives,

and it's here to talk about it.

Hi, Julia.

Good morning.

If we are spending more because gas prices are higher,

because everything to do with energy is higher,

does that contribute to GDP growth?

And is that like real GDP growth?

And by real, I mean, should we be thinking about it as actual growth if we're

just spending more but not getting as much for our money? Well, we can separate the impact of

inflation and actual real gains in spending. And we did see real gains in consumer spending in the

first quarter. They were slower than we had seen last

year. And all of the purchasing power for consumers came from the higher tax refunds this

season, from the big beautiful bill tax cuts. If it weren't for those tax cuts, consumers would

have lost ground. So while those tax cuts were meant to stimulate the economy at the end of the day,

...