The Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance made the following statement today in response to the U.S. Labor Department releasing data showing that inflation continues to reach levels not seen since the early 1980s.

The Labor Department numbers show the consumer-price index, which measures what consumers pay for goods and services, rose a full 7% in December over last year, the fastest pace since 1982. It was also the seventh straight month in which inflation topped 5% and represents a .6% increase over the month of November.

“The people that are hurt most by this out-of-control inflation are the middle class and working classes. The prices of everything continues to skyrocket including essentials like food, fuel, and heating costs. While legislators may receive automatic pay increases to offset the side effects of reckless economic policies, the general public is not so lucky,” stated Paul Diego Craney, spokesperson for Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance. 

“The reckless spending policies on Beacon Hill contribute to this out-of-control spiral of inflation. Tax revenues continue to come in well over benchmarks, with billions of extra dollars sitting in Beacon Hill coffers. Rather than try to be constructive with that windfall, Speaker Ron Mariano and Senate President Karen Spilka just continue to spend more and more and more. What’s worse, these same out of touch legislative leaders will then move to pretend our state is poor and try to fool enough Massachusetts voters to convince them to vote for their latest ballot question tax increase gimmick, which will remove our state constitutional protections of equal taxation and allow lawmakers to raise the income tax on whoever they want,” said Craney.

“The public often wonders why their paychecks don’t get any bigger while politicians get rich when they get elected to government. It’s really simple. Politicians propose gimmicks to raise taxes, which take more money out of ordinary people’s paychecks and politicians give themselves automatic pay raises when everyone else is suffering,” concluded Craney.