EDITORIAL: Eat cake instead of hot dogs

Do you remember how much you spent for your July 4 cookout last year? Well, in an embarrassing tweet posted by the White House a year ago, the Biden administration bragged that, according to data from the American Farm Bureau Federation, the cost of your holiday cookout was a whopping 16 cents lower in 2021 than it was in 2020. And you had President Joe Biden’s economic plan to thank.

Fast forward a year. Oops.

Updated numbers from the bureau show the price of your Independence Day barbecue this year has skyrocketed by 17 percent. This time, though, the president isn’t as eager to take credit.

The latest bureau survey, Karen Townsen of Hot Air reported this week, found that food and supply price hikes will leave you paying about $69.68 for a 10-person cookout, an increase of nearly $10 from last year. The analysis reveals what most consumers already know: The prices of ground beef, chicken breasts, pork chops, pork and beans, lemonade and numerous other products have sharply increased over the past 12 months.

The survey didn’t take into account — with gasoline at $5.50 a gallon — the higher costs of driving to the market to stock up on cook-out favorites.

Don’t expect Mr. Biden to acknowledge his administration’s role in the inflation fiasco. The president is still pointing the finger in every direction except inward. Fact is, however, his White House has been wrong at every turn when it comes to higher prices. It was only a year ago this month that Mr. Biden told reporters that “no serious economist thinks unchecked inflation is on the way.” His economic “experts” maintained for months that the problem was “manageable” and “transitory.”

By May, inflation had hit 8 percent, the highest level in 40 years.

Smacked by reality, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted last month that there have been issues affecting the economy “that I didn’t, at the time, fully understand.” Comforting. Biden’s Federal Reserve found itself in the same boat and is only now taking steps intended to stem rising prices, leading to market sell-offs and potentially higher unemployment. But the president remains in denial, still advocating for more spending blowouts.

All this has cast a damper on many holiday gatherings. In Chicago, Reuters reported, one 40-year-old stay-at-home mom said her family will pair up with friends in order to minimize the pain of higher barbecue costs. “We’re going to someone else’s house,” she told the news service. “They’re hosting, so they’re buying most of the stuff. We appreciate glomming on to somebody else.”

But this White House has a different solution: Let them eat cake instead of hot dogs.