[ "People across the country—and across party lines—want
corporate giants and their enablers held to account," says advocacy
group, citing fresh survey data.]
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NEW SURVEY OF VOTERS HAS MESSAGE FOR BIDEN: FIGHT CORPORATE GREED TO
REIN IN INFLATION  
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Jake Johnson
June 14, 2022
Common Dreams
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_ "People across the country—and across party lines—want
corporate giants and their enablers held to account," says advocacy
group, citing fresh survey data. _

Prices are seen at a gas pump on June 11, 2022 in Woodbridge, New
Jersey., (Photo: Kena Betancur/VIEWpress via Getty Images)

 

WITH INFLATION RUNNING RAMPANT in the United States and the Biden
administration scrambling for a solution
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what's become a major political and economic crisis, new polling data
and swing-state focus group results shared exclusively with _Common
Dreams_ suggest one approach would be especially effective:
Challenging corporate greed.

Conducted by the research firm GBAO on behalf of Fight Corporate
Monopolies, the recent national surveys and focus groups
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two key battleground states show that voters are particularly
responsive to and supportive of messaging that connects price hikes to
profiteering by big business.

For example, GBAO finds that 74% of voters say they would be more
likely to back a candidate who supports outlawing price gouging as a
way to "crack down on companies using inflation and the pandemic to
raise prices." Voters, facing pain at the pump, become even more
supportive when the surging profits
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oil and gas companies are mentioned.

"There is hardly any difference across party lines in engagement on
these policies, suggesting an opportunity for either party to define
itself as a champion on corporate accountability," GBAO notes in
a memo
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to _Common Dreams_.

Speaking for themselves during focus group sessions held in
April—when inflation was up 8.3%
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year before, the highest level in four decades—voters in Wisconsin
and Arizona confirmed their view that corporate profit-seeking is
contributing to the price hikes U.S. consumers are seeing at grocery
stores
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gas stations, restaurants, and elsewhere.

One voter, identified as a Black woman from Wisconsin, said that
corporations are using inflationary pressures across the U.S.
and global
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"convenient excuse to line pockets."

Another, identified as a Latina from Phoenix, said that "there is a
greed factor in the raising of prices."

"I think they go up whether there's a pandemic or not," she added,
"but companies are covering their losses from the last couple of
years."

Inflation in the U.S. has only gotten worse since April as Russia's
war on Ukraine roils global energy markets and corporations push
higher costs onto consumers, even after raking in record profits
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2021.

Federal data published last week showed that inflation was up 8.6% in
May compared to a year earlier, exceeding analysts' expectations and
sparking fears of more aggressive interest rate hikes from the Federal
Reserve, whose chair Jerome Powell has expressed a desire
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"get wages down."

In a statement responding to the latest figures, President Joe Biden
vowed that his administration will "continue to do everything we can
to lower prices for the American people."

The president also briefly hit on price gouging by major fossil fuel
companies. It is "important," Biden said, "that the oil and gas and
refining industries in this country not use the challenge created by
the war in Ukraine as a reason to make things worse for families with
excessive profit-taking or price hikes."

Progressives have urged Biden to more forcefully highlight that
dynamic even as top members of his own administration—including
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen—dismiss it
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Powell pushes the widely disputed notion that modest wage increases
are fueling inflation.

In recent months, administration officials have been locked in an
internal battle over whether to publicly connect corporate
profiteering and consolidation to surging prices. As the _Washington
Post_ reported
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February, members of the White House Council of Economic Advisers have
"raised objections to the idea that a spike in prices was due to
corporate power."

But outside economists have said the connection is clear. In an
April blog post
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Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute pointed to data
indicating that growing corporate profit margins "account for a
disproportionate share of price growth."

On top of evidence showing that the argument tying record profits to
rising inflation is accurate, Fight Corporate Monopolies executive
director Helen Brosnan noted that it is also very popular. Polls
released over the past several months, including those carried out by
GBAO, have consistently found that voters blame corporate greed
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the inflation spike.

"The results of our massive survey effort couldn't be clearer,"
Brosnan said. "Ahead of the midterms, voters across the nation are
eager to support candidates who embrace economic populism and prove to
the American people that corporations are no longer above the law."

In a new letter to Biden shared with _Common Dreams_, Fight Corporate
Monopolies cites its polling data and focus group results to implore
the White House to take "immediate, bold action" to combat corporate
price gouging.

"The American people want to know what side you're on: Do you stand
with working families hit with higher costs or will you allow
corporations to keep jacking up prices, outsource more jobs, avoid
paying taxes, and evade prosecution for clear crimes?" reads the
letter, sent to the White House last week. "People across the
country—and across party lines—want corporate giants and their
enablers held to account. They are poised to reward leaders who crack
down on corporate actors who threaten our economy and our democracy."

"You have the tools at your discretion, we urge you to publicly show a
wholesale approach to combat corporate power," the letter adds.

Progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups have recently stressed that
Biden can take a number of steps to drive down prices without needing
approval from Congress. In March, the Congressional Progressive Caucus
(CPC) called on
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president to use his executive authority to slash prescription drug
costs, which are rising faster than inflation
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pharmaceutical companies set sky-high prices and reap the rewards in
their bottom lines.

The CPC also recommended that Biden "fight cost increases for working
families and protect workers by developing an inter-agency task force
to investigate, prosecute, and deter white-collar crime, including
anti-competitive and price-gouging business behaviors as well as
firms' exploitation of heightened inflation to pad profits."

Democratic lawmakers have also introduced
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that would hit large oil and gas companies with a windfall profits
tax, an overwhelmingly popular
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The White House has signaled
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it is open to supporting the bill, but the measure has not received a
vote in the House or the Senate.

"Major oil companies made $35 billion in profit in the first quarter
of this year, and at the end of the year it is estimated that they're
gonna give $88 billion in stock buybacks to their wealthy
shareholders," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said
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an event Monday. "So I do think we have to do something about the
outrageously high price of gas."

"I think the president should bring the major oil companies in,"
Sanders added, "and tell them we're gonna have a windfall profits tax
on what they're doing in order to stop them from ripping off the
American people."

_Jake Johnson is a staff writer for Common Dreams._

* inflation
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* corporate profits
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* corporate greed
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