The Joe Biden “build back better” plan is spitting and sputtering along. Just a day after Jen Psaki, the White House Press Secretary, proclaimed that the administration wanted to use the pandemic to fundamentally change the economy, we got another indicator of just what that looks like.

The newest inflation numbers are out, and they are striking fear into middle-class Americans everywhere.

JUST IN – U.S. inflation rises 5.4% YoY to a 13-year high.

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) October 13, 2021

We aren’t just talking about inflation on marginal items either that people may not use every day such as rental cars. Price rises on things like food, energy, gas, and retail goods continue to accelerate, with September showing a faster pace than August.

BREAKING: Inflation was up 5.4% over last year in September – the highest rate in 13 years.

Prices rose 0.4% in Sept, up from 0.3% in August

Gas, food and goods continue to be key drivers of inflation. Used car prices fell slightly but remain 24% higher than last year. pic.twitter.com/8cN1eHaBvQ

— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) October 13, 2021

This is a disaster for the Biden administration, which has been spinning over the last week a narrative that the president’s approval is rebounding. Yet, news like this will no doubt push those numbers further into the red. And despite Jill Biden claiming yesterday that this is all a messaging problem, this is clearly a problem with the actual results. Biden’s economy is failing, and people do not like how that’s affecting their everyday lives.

Anecdotally, gas prices rose 21 cents overnight in my area, going from $2.78 a gallon to $2.99 a gallon at the same station, and that’s actually cheap comparatively. That scene is playing out all over the country as the squeeze gets tighter. Meanwhile, people are watching their savings and investments shrink as we enter a period that feels a lot like the 1970s. If you look at a chart of the stock market over the last week, it resembles a black diamond ski slope. So yeah, things aren’t going well.

All of this would be largely avoidable if we had a president that possessed some semblance of mental acuity and common sense. Instead, we have Joe Biden, who has sought to handicap the energy industry and economy as a whole every step of the way. His self-aggrandizing, partisan moves have put a bullet into an economic vehicle that was gaining speed without interference.

Worse, none of this appears to be temporary or transitory. As I noted, September’s inflation actually represented an acceleration over August. That means we haven’t even peaked yet. Hard times are ahead, and I feel for the families barely making it by that are paying a heavy price so a senile old man can pretend he’s a transformational figure.