WASHINGTON – Skyrocketing inflation is costing Oklahomans thousands of dollars, according to the state’s junior senator.

U.S. Sen. James Lankford said Oklahoma families are paying more than $7,000 for the same products that they bought a year ago in the wake of the announcement that consumer prices rose to 9.1% in June, the highest since 1981.

“These are policy decisions that have been made that are affecting people in my neighborhood, in my state, in my county, in the cities in my state. The newest estimate for Oklahoma is each family is paying $7,198 more this year for the exact same products they were buying last year,” said Lankford.

“Wages have not gone up for families in my state.  They’re falling farther and farther behind directly because of the policies that have been put in place by this administration.”

Lankford pointed out that these inflation rates are directly impacting families in Oklahoma due to wages not being increased but accompanied by a higher cost of living.

“For those individuals that live paycheck-to-paycheck, this higher inflation has forced them to cut back on their consumption. That lower consumption will dampen Gross Domestic Product, (GDP) which is the measure of the nation’s income,” said Benjamin Keen, a University of Oklahoma associate economics professor.

“In fact, the Atlanta Fed’s GDP now forecast for second quarter 2022 GDP is -1.2%, which indicates the U.S. economy is expected to shrink in the second quarter of 2022.”

Lankford put the blame for the high inflation rate on the Biden administration saying there is a direct parallel to inflation during the Carter administration.

“The reason I am going to Saudi Arabia though is much broader it is to promote U.S. interest, promote U.S. interest, in a way that I think we have an opportunity to reassert what I think we made a mistake walking away from, out influence in the Middle East,” said President Joe Biden in a press conference.

As Biden travels to Saudi Arabia this week to meet with them about increasing oil production to bring down prices in America, Lankford pointed to President Carter doing the same in the 1970s.

“All I could think is, history is repeating itself,” said Lankford.

This 9.1% inflation rate is a reflection of the Consumer Price Index of June and does not reflect the recent price drops in some prices such as gasoline.

“While today’s headline inflation reading is unacceptably high, it is also out-of-date,” said Biden in a statement.

Gaylord News is a reporting project of the University of Oklahoma Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication.  For more stories by Gaylord News go to GaylordNews.net.