ATR president Grover Norquist authored an op-ed for The Daily Caller on the Kamala Harris vow to impose price controls.
Norquist wrote:
Kamala Harris announced her solution to inflation: price controls. This may be a turning point in the 2024 election.
Until now, she was hiding her policy positions, refusing interviews, and having staff claim she had disowned her long-standing radical positions.
But now, on the central issue of the election – inflation – she has revealed she has no idea what causes it or how to stop it. Voters see the real Kamala Harris that cannot be unseen.
The government setting prices for goods and services has a very long history — of failure. It is not just a bad idea. It is a very old, bad idea.
The failure of wage and price controls (you cannot control the price of goods and services without first controlling the wages of workers) is acknowledged by historians and economists of all political persuasions. This is not a left-right argument.
Government laws setting prices, wages and rents do not bring down prices. They do not make inflation go away.
Norquist also wrote:
Government needs to spend less to solve inflation. Harris wants our government to take more of our income in taxes — on payrolls, energy, capital gains — and will even then have to print more money as her spending promises to the special interest groups dwarf the significant tax hikes she is threatening each day.
The Harris campaign has spent a great deal of effort trying to distance herself from the Biden-Harris administration’s spending and inflation and big government regulations.
But in one day, Kamala has told the world she understands less about what causes inflation and how to fix it than Biden, Carter, and even European socialists.
There is no “joy” in the failure of price controls. Not in a collapsing Roman empire. Not during the Carter stagnation years. And not today.
Read the entire op-ed here.