The majority of American people report spending more on food now than they did a year ago, and most anticipate paying much more in the future.

According to the most recent Rasmussen Reports poll, 85% of 1,000 American adults surveyed said they are spending more for food now than they were a year ago. In contrast, just 9% of respondents claim they are not paying extra, and 6% are unclear.

The number of respondents who claim they pay more for food now than they did a year ago is marginally lower than it was in August of last year. 89 percent of people claimed they were paying extra at the time.

A majority (57 percent) of respondents in the most recent poll also said they expect to spend more on food in a year. Twenty-two percent of respondents indicated they anticipated paying “roughly the same,” ten percent said they anticipated paying a “smaller” sum, and 12 percent were unclear.

The same percentage (57%) also claimed that increasing food costs had altered their eating habits, while 37% disagreed and 6% were unclear.

It’s interesting to note that people were less inclined to modify their eating habits as their income increased:

• 73% of people earning less than $30,000
• 64% of those earning between $30,000 and $50,000
• 59% of those earning between $50,000 and $100,000
• 47% of those who earn between $100,000 and $200,000
• 23% of individuals who earn more than $200,000

The Rasmussen Reports survey, which included 1,000 American adults, was conducted from January 23 to January 25. The margin of error for the survey was 3%, and its degree of confidence was 95%.

According to a Gallup poll published this week, half of Americans think they are in worse shape financially than they were a year ago, the highest percentage of reported decline since the financial crisis.

The results are especially bleak.

“Since Gallup first asked this question in 1976, it has been unusual for half or more Americans to indicate they are worse off. The only other time this happened was during the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009,” according to Gallup News.

The results of the study, conducted between January 2nd and January 22nd, indicate that inflation has taken a significant toll on the financial circumstances of many Americans. In 2022, average hourly and weekly salaries fell for the second year in a row, as salary gains were drowned by increased costs. Higher interest rates and a drop in the stock market, according to Gallup, weighed on people’s perceptions of their financial status.

The results come as unemployment has reached its lowest level since 1969, and job vacancies have reached or exceeded historical highs.

Last year, Americans were split 41 percent to 41 percent on whether they were better off or worse off. They were also evenly divided the previous year.

Although President Joe Biden has stated that his policies are intended to “create an economy from the bottom up and the middle out, not from the top down,” lower-income Americans are considerably more likely to say that their situation worsened during the Biden administration’s second year. According to the Gallup survey, almost 61 percent of households with incomes below $40,000 reported being worse off. Only 26 percent said they were better off.

This is a significant increase from last year, when only 41% of lower-income Americans thought they were worse off.

Almost half of middle-income households feel they are worse off than they were last year. 37 percent said their household’s financial status has improved.

Higher-income Americans are worse off, according to 43%, a 10% increase over the previous year’s survey. 39 percent believe they are better off.

Partisan politics may influence how people assess their own wealth. Sixty-one percent of Republicans believe they are worse off, compared to 37 percent of Democrats. 47 percent of Democrats believe they are better off.

Nonetheless, many Americans tend to feel the worst is over. According to the study, 60% believe they will be better off a year from now. Twenty-eight percent believe they will be worse off. According to Gallup, this optimism is shared across the income range. Even still, Americans expect economic circumstances to worsen, with inflation, unemployment, and interest rates rising while economic growth and stock values fall.

The Federal Reserve continues its battle to reduce inflation by authorizing a quarter-point hike in its benchmark interest rate, indicating it expects additional increases in the future.

The federal funds rate will increase to a range between 4.50 percent and 4.75 percent, the highest level since 2007.

“The Committee believes that continued increases in the target range would be necessary in order to achieve a monetary policy stance that is sufficiently restrictive to restore inflation to 2% over time,” the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) said in a statement.

Investors anticipated the 25 basis point increase, the Fed’s ninth straight increase since raising its target in March 2022. The Fed boosted its target range by half a percentage point at its previous meeting in December.

Markets anticipate that the Fed will raise interest rates one more time this year at the meeting before taking a break to assess how the economy and inflation react to the highest interest rates in over a decade. Jerome Powell, the head of the Fed, and other central bank officials have warned the market against assuming that a stop or slowdown in rate hikes signals an impending switch to rate lowering. However, the prices of major financial assets indicate that investors anticipate a rate decrease before the end of the year.

“In evaluating the extent of future increases in the target range, the Committee will consider the cumulative tightening of its monetary policy, the delays with which monetary policy influences economic activity and inflation, as well as economic and financial events,” the FOMC stated.

The FOMC is “very attentive to inflation concerns,” according to the statement, a language the Fed has used since its second hike in May of last year.

In this statement, the Fed removed references to the pandemic, including one that ascribed inflation to “supply and demand imbalances that were connected to the outbreak, increased food and energy costs, and broader pricing pressures.” The Fed also no longer claims to be actively monitoring “public health” when analyzing potential monetary policy adjustments.

Inflation has improved in recent months, according to the Fed.

“Inflation has eased slightly but remains high,” the statement lamented.

The State of California is seeking to pin the theft of $30 billion in coronavirus relief funds from the state’s Employment Development Dept. on former President Donald Trump.

The California State Auditor criticized the EDD for serious misconduct in 2021, according to Breitbart News:

“Californians are expected to apply for unemployment benefits and maternity leave reimbursement through the EDD. However, fraud and poor management have resulted in losses of billions of dollars. While legitimately worthy Californians wait months for the money they need, the EDD system has mailed unemployment checks to jail prisoners.” 

“EDD did not significantly step up its fraud detection efforts for its unemployment benefits program until months into the epidemic, which led to payouts of nearly $10.4 billion for claims that it later discovered may be fraudulent, the study itself notes.”

Now that Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the new chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, has inquired, California is attempting to blame Trump’s purportedly ineffective federal leadership.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the state responded to the new congressional probe by shifting the blame:

In a four-page letter to Rep. James Comer, R-Kentucky, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, head of the state Employment Development Dept. Nancy Farias stated: “Unfortunately, the Trump Administration exhibited little interest in building (a) coordinated national response when these (emergency pandemic unemployment) programs were begun in 2020, leaving states to fight for themselves against a demonstrable pattern of sophisticated, multinational criminal syndicates at work.”

Ironically, Dems., not the Trump admin., insisted on using state unemployment systems to distribute coronavirus assistance rather than relying only on federal government checks. They were following the recommendations of liberal economists who intended to use increased unemployment as a kind of benefit.

According to The New York Times:

“Democrats suggested that Congress should concentrate on specifically targeted legislation that could be passed swiftly.”

According to Ms. Pelosi, “We asked the economists what truly can stimulate the economy rapidly, and they answered things like food stamps — because people would spend that quickly — unemployment insurance and refundable tax credits.” There must be a connection between what we’re doing and the coronavirus problem.”

Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) stated on Wednesday that Republicans are disregarding fraud in conservative states while focusing their investigations on Democrat-ruled areas like California and New York.

California suffered the most from this type of fraud, while many other states did as well. Some have attributed this to the state’s vast population, while others have said that it is a result of the state’s dysfunctional, Democrat-run bureaucracy.

A resolution to repeal President Joe Biden’s ESG investment rule, which may politicize 401(k)s, was launched by 49 Senate Republicans and Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV).

Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), who provided the first statement on the matter to Fox News Digital, said that “President Biden is endangering retirement funds for millions of Americans for a political goal.”

The resolution of disapproval was spearheaded by Braun and Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY).

“The last thing we should be doing is encouraging fiduciaries to make these decisions with a lower rate of return for solely ideological reasons at a time when Americans’ 401(k)s have already taken such a blow owing to market downturns and record high inflation,” Braun said. “For the sake of the millions of Americans who rely on these funds for their retirement, we are glad to oppose this regulation.”

The Biden admin. released a Dept. of Labor (DOL) plan that would take effect on Jan. 30 and allow retirement plan managers to take Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations into account when making investment decisions.

The most recent tool used by Wall Street financial oligopolies and the gov’t to get businesses and American investors to support social causes they otherwise would not support is ESG investment. Combating purported climate change, diversity mandates, and other leftist values are included in this.

The assistant secretary for employee benefits security, Lisa Gomez, stated in a written statement in Nov. that “Climate change and other social, environmental, and governance factors can really be useful for plan investors as they make choices about how they can best grow and safeguard the retirement savings of America’s workers.”

Retirement plans should only be concerned with generating the highest returns, not furthering a political goal, according to Barr.

“Retirees would receive lower returns on the investments of their hard-earned money if Congress doesn’t intervene to stop the Department of Labor’s rule approving ESG investing in retirement plans. Congress has to take action now, and I commend Sen. Braun and our allies for picking up the battle once again,” Barr added.

A disapproval resolution may be sponsored by a politician under the Congressional Review Act, and as a result, it cannot be stopped from being discussed on the floor. For the resolution to pass the Senate, only a simple majority is needed.

According to Fox News Digital, supporters of the measure expect that one more Senate Democrat will support the measure, increasing the likelihood that it will pass the upper body of Congress.

The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, a federal watchdog monitoring pandemic-era spending, discovered $5.4 billion in “possibly fraudulent pandemic loans” in a report published this week.

In conjunction with the $5.4 billion in loans, PRAC detected 69,323 “questionable” Social Security numbers.

According to the report:

“The PRAC Fraud Alert reveals 69,323 suspect Social Security Numbers were used to receive $5.4 billion from the Small Business Administration’s COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan program and Paycheck Protection Program. Small companies and their workers affected by the pandemic received over $1.2 trillion in aid through these initiatives.”

Before requesting additional data from the SSA, the committee’s team of data researchers cross-referenced data from over 33 million PPP and EIDL loan applications to publicly available SSA information, determining that 221,427 Social Security Numbers “were either not issued by the SSA” or didn’t “match the name and/or date of birth information” that was provided by loan applicants.

The report of the committee examined loan disbursements from April 2020 to October 2022.

The Small Business Administration’s “initial approach to starting these programs made billions of dollars accessible to millions of borrowers that were affected by the pandemic outbreak, but used few program controls to authenticate applicants’ eligibility before disbursing funds,” according to the report.

“Although the SBA later incorporated certain fraud protection mechanisms in 2021, the initial implementation of PPP put speed of disbursement above inspection of application eligibility, a trade-off that contributed to widespread fraud,” the paper continues.

Interestingly, SBA spokesperson Christina Carr used the contents of the study to criticize former President Trump’s administration, claiming that the report is a “great illustration of why it was a mistake not to adopt further anti-fraud measures under the Trump administration.”

The PRAC study comes as the GOP-led House Oversight Committee plans a hearing on “the flagrant misuse of taxpayer money used on COVID relief programs” this week.

“I don’t think the PPP loan program will fare well in history,” Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) stated Monday.

PRAC Chairman Michael Horowitz, who is also the Inspector General of the DOJ, is scheduled to speak before the Committee. Horowitz will be joined by Comptroller Gen. Gene Dodaro and Assistant Director of the US Secret Service Office of Investigations David M. Smith.

When announcing the hearing, Comer stated that the Oversight Committee owed it to Americans to “determine how hundreds of billions of taxpayer funds spent under the pretext of pandemic assistance were lost to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.”

“Dems in the Administration and Congress have spent a great deal of time pushing money out the door and far too little time performing meaningful scrutiny of how that money was being used over the last two years,” Comer said.

“That is changing with our Republican majority in the House. The Oversight Committee, led by Republicans, is returning to its fundamental mission of rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in the federal government and holding President Biden responsible.”