Inflation is raging at an annual rate of 8.5 percent. March’s extremely hot price growth of 1.2 percent pushes the nation’s inflation rate to levels not seen since the first few months of the Reagan administration in May 1981.

Unfortunately, President Joe Biden has no idea why prices are out of control, even though he was in the Senate when inflation last was raging in the 1970s.

During his 15 months in office, we have heard Biden dismiss inflation, call inflation transitory, and now blame it on Putin and anyone else he can find. 

What Joe Biden doesn’t seem to understand is that when you set the inflation house on fire and keep pouring gasoline on it, through federal spending schemes, anti-energy policies, and failed foreign policies, you don’t get to blame the guy down the street for fanning the flames you allowed to consume most of the house. 

Here is the truth. It is Joe Biden’s unnecessary 2021, me too, COVID spending extravaganza which lit the inflation fire. It has been his anti-fossil fuel policies that discourage domestic production and deny pipeline infrastructure to move oil and natural gas around the country, which figuratively poured gasoline on that inflation fire. And it is Biden’s disastrous pro-Iranian, anti-Saudi and Israel, Middle East foreign policy, which has turned the world’s largest producer of crude, Saudi Arabia, from allies on most things to at best disinterested observers, resulting in their unwillingness to increase the world’s oil supply.

Congress needs to take back control over spending in America by rejecting any new COVID bailouts — including but not limited to the Restaurant Restoration Act, which would add $40 billion in new spending — and impose a freeze on the growth of all regularly appropriated spending until inflation is wrestled to the ground.

Congress should have a fight over Biden’s disastrous domestic energy policy every single day and make Joe Biden and the Democrats feel the political pain because of what their policies are doing at the pump.

In short, it is time to stop spending, restore domestic energy development, and abandon the crazy Biden-Iranian Mullah alliance. There are things that can be done to fight inflation; the sad fact is that Joe Biden is either incapable or unwilling to do them. 

To get inflation under control, it will take a major attitude adjustment amongst many of our political class. For years, Democrats and some Republicans in Washington accepted the idea that they could spend unending amounts of money with no one paying the bill. Now that inflation bill has come due and if Joe Biden and Congress refuse to act in this crisis, the inevitable outcome will be a deep, painful recession which has been how inflation spirals have typically ended.      

Rick Manning is president of Americans for Limited Government (ALG). The organization says it is a “non-partisan, nationwide network committed to advancing free-market reforms, private property rights, and core American liberties.” 

An interesting thing happened after Russia invaded Ukraine. Though U.S. standing in the world had taken a knock after the much-needed but chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, there was no question where the world’s democracies would turn for leadership in the Ukraine crisis. As much of Europe and Asia has found a new resolve on behalf of democratic values, in the time since the war began the U.S. has been front and center in rallying them to the cause.

This is a role we have played — with ups and downs — for many decades. It became fashionable not very long ago to argue that the U.S.’s preeminent role in world affairs has disappeared, but it’s harder to make that case at the moment. There are other world powers, of course — China and Russia notable among them. And it’s also true that after long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American public’s taste for big-power projections of force has diminished. Yet as the democracies of the world look forward, America’s leadership role remains indispensable.

With all of our problems — and we have no shortage of them — there are several reasons the U.S. has retained that position. The first is that, in the end, we know what we stand for: personal liberty, justice, economic opportunity, and a sense of morality in world affairs. 

I will never forget a moment some years back, after a meeting at the White House when George H.W. Bush was president. He and I had become friends — across the partisan aisle — when we both served in the U.S. House, and as we walked out, he turned to me and asked, “Lee, did I do the right thing?” That impressed me: the President of the United States turning to a friend and asking whether he’d gotten it right. That’s what we usually strive for as a country: to do the right thing.

There are other factors, of course, that underlie our ability to maintain our position in the world. One, clearly, is our military strength, its technological innovation, and the professionalism of our armed forces. Another is a solid economy that, despite its inequalities and occasional struggles, has over the long term brought general prosperity to Americans and made us a destination for ambitious people around the world. 

We have also benefited from a remarkable degree of political stability. We have our hard-fought differences, and there is no question that we face a time of testing ahead as some politicians seek to upset the institutions and rules by which we have lived for so long. But even so, the nation is not coming apart at the seams. In a dangerous world, that’s a vital asset not to be squandered.

So is the attitude we bring to the task of world leadership — a sense of civility that leads many nations (though not all) to trust us to act decently, work closely with allies and other like-minded countries, and cooperate with international organizations. We take risks now and then and face flak for it, but in general, there’s an expectation that we will behave decently.

In part, this is because we bring good people to the task of leadership. We maintain a reputation for fielding a strong civil service, treating elections seriously, and for the most part electing solid politicians. We constantly refresh the country’s talent through immigration, and our institutions of education — kindergarten through graduate school — produce a steady stream of motivated, talented people who want to do the right thing. There is no question that over the years, American education made American preeminence possible.

None of this is to say that our future on the global stage is assured. Our tendency in recent years to elect politicians who embrace the extremes has been troublesome. Our battles over the curriculum in schools threaten to undermine the basic work of education. Our immigration battles have made this a less-welcoming country to talent from other countries. And, of course, we face ambitious rivals for power overseas, China especially.

Still, we have a legacy of strong institutions and national strengths that have seen us through trying times before. If we don’t undermine them from within, they can do so in the trying times ahead, as well.      

Lee Hamilton, 91, is a senior advisor for the Indiana University (IU) Center on Representative Government, distinguished scholar at IU Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, and professor of practice at the IU O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs. Hamilton, a Democrat, was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years (1965-1999), representing a district in south-central Indiana.