Amazon founder Jeff Bezos took to Twitter on Sunday to again criticize the Biden administration’s approach to inflation, accusing it of injecting “even more stimulus into an already over-heated economy” and asserting that inflation is most harmful to the poor.
“Only [U.S. Sen. Joe] Manchin saved them from themselves,” Bezos tweeted, speaking of U.S. President Joe Biden’s nearly $2 trillion COVID-19 bill, passed last year, and the role Manchin took in limiting aid. “Inflation is a regressive tax that most hurts the least affluent. Misdirection doesn’t help the country.”
Bezos’ statement accompanied a retweet of a Saturday tweet by the Neoliberal Project that said the United States’ deficit “is decreasing because we’re not doing pandemic aid anymore, and federal receipts are up because of inflation. Congress, or the Biden administration, didn’t do anything to lower the deficit.”
That tweet was a response to a Saturday tweet by President Joe Biden stating that the U.S. Is on track to cut the deficit by $1.5 trillion this year.
“It matters to families, because reducing the deficit is one of the main ways we can ease inflationary pressures,” Biden tweeted.
On Friday Bezos accused Biden on Twitter of “misdirection” for saying that inflation could be curbed by making wealthy corporations “pay their fair share.”
“The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead,” Bezos tweeted, a reference to the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board, announced last month. “Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection.”
Manchin, often referred to as a centrist or conservative Democrat, has been accused of blocking key aspects of the Biden administration’s agenda. Among other accomplishments, he insisted that COVID stimulus checks be denied to childless single filers earning $80,000 or above, rather than $100,000 or above.
More recently, he voted with Republicans to block a bill that would have codified abortion rights. That bill failed, 49-51.