Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned that states are powerless to guard against the "significant headwinds" of inflation.
The Florida Republican discussed inflation concerns Friday during a press conference in Bay County, Florida Politics reported.
"Those are, I think, are beyond our control at the state level," said DeSantis, who added he was "really concerned about the inflation."
The governor blamed the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress for the rise in prices.
"It's being driven, I think, by a lot of the really bad policies coming out of Washington," he said. "That eats away at families' budgets. Gas is going through the roof. I mean, it's incredible how much gas has gone up.
"And just building things, everything's more expensive. People want to come and build homes here. It's harder to build them because it's harder to get the materials. It's more expensive and everything."
DeSantis, widely considered a potential contender for the 2024 Republican national ticket, seemed to take aim at President Joe Biden and other progressives who claimed economic problems would be short-lived.
"They said that this was not going to be something that was sustained. Yet we see it. It's sustained. It's real," DeSantis said.
In discussing escalating gasoline prices, the governor blamed Democrats for not "doing the energy resources that we have," Florida Politics said.
"We should be doing the [Keystone] pipelines. We should be doing the stuff at [Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] and the other things so we can be energy-independent," DeSantis said.
"Instead, we’re now begging OPEC to lower prices. That's not where you want to be. Inflation needs to be dealt with. Gas prices need to be dealt with."
When signing the state budget in June, DeSantis said that "the bill" would come due.
"And look, in the last 15 months, this federal government has added more to the debt than we’ve ever seen since World War II in such a short period of time," he said at the time. "And my view on that is something's got to be done. There's got to be; the bill's going to come due somehow.
"Whether it's higher interest rates, higher inflation, I'm not sure, but it is a concern when you look around and see the gas prices."
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