5
Dems push Biden to act on food prices with inflation ranking as top issue ahead of election
Fox News ^ | 5/14/24 | Julia Johnson
Posted on 5/15/2024, 5:38:04 AM by Libloather
Dozens of Democratic lawmakers signed a letter to President Biden, pleading with him to act on high grocery prices that have been slow to fall as inflation has come down.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., led the letter Monday morning, calling on Biden to "exercise your executive authority to take additional action to address rising food prices without congressional action."
The letter amassed 40 Democratic signatories between the House and Senate, including senators Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and representatives Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., among others.
The lawmakers acknowledged "Americans are facing sky-high food prices."
Notably, grocery prices have not fallen at the same rate as inflation. This is "caused by excessive price gouging by food and grocery giants," the Democrats claimed.
Democrats asked Biden to direct his administration's Department of Justice to "prosecute actors in the agricultural and food sectors for pricefixing and other anticompetitive behavior" and task the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with creating a joint task force with the purpose of investigating the manipulation of food prices.
"Our letter is about pointing out areas that exist in the law but have long been underused," Warren told Time magazine in an interview. "Now is the perfect moment to move."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...