You’ve probably heard by now, including from the reporting here at RedState, that inflation reached another new high in January. Despite fairly recent proclamations from the White House that the rise would be “transitory” and “temporary,” prices are continuing to explode.

And contrary to some of the spin, the increases aren’t just on used cars and hotels, though that would be bad enough. Gas prices, food prices, home energy prices, and other things that are used on a daily basis by Americans are skyrocketing.

That’s left Democrats in a very odd place, as illustrated by Nancy Pelosi’s Sunday interview in which she tried to make the case that inflation is actually a good thing.

PELOSI: "The fact that people have jobs always contributes to an increase in inflation and that’s a good thing." pic.twitter.com/bnBKm1O6Yf

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) February 13, 2022

According to Pelosi, the current inflationary boom is a positive because it means that people have jobs. Of course, anyone that’s been alive for longer than the last year is well aware of how ludicrous that is. When we were near full employment and the economy was humming under Donald Trump, inflation remained at normal levels. Even under Barack Obama’s tenure, when the country saw big jobs growth coming out of the Great Recession, we didn’t see inflation get anywhere near the levels we are currently seeing. So to suggest that people having jobs is somehow a primary driver of inflation is lunacy.

We can go further in rebutting Pelosi’s commentary, though. If you look at the jobs market, while we have made strong gains (mostly due to red states not listening to Joe Biden) over the last two years in making up lost ground due to the COVID-19 lockdowns, we are just now reaching 2019 levels of employment. What was the inflation rate in 2019? It was 1.81 percent.

Yet, according to Pelosi, people having jobs is the primary driver of inflation right now. How can that be when the same number of jobs in 2019 produced 1.8 percent vs. the 7.5 percent we are seeing in 2022? The answer is obviously that despite Pelosi’s fallacious claims, employment levels are not the primary driver of inflation. So what’s the big difference between 2019 and 2022? Clearly, it’s government spending.

Pelosi can’t say that, though, because that would be admitting that the Democrats’ entire agenda has been a counter-productive mess, which it has been. The entire exchange exposes the corner she and her party have painted themselves into. Things are so absurd that we now have the Speaker of the House arguing that inflation is a good thing, but what else is she supposed to say? That the American Rescue Plan was a ridiculous boondoggle? That all of Joe Biden’s big-spending only led to a prolonged economic recovery that would have otherwise come organically?

She can’t say that, so she’s left proclaiming that water is not, in fact, wet on national TV. Still, I think most Americans understand they are being gaslit, and that’s why Republicans continue to show a strong lead in the generic ballot polling going into 2022. You can only lie to people for so long.