Submitted by Starla Brown
“We must unleash our country’s energy abundance, end Washington’s wasteful spending, and ignite innovation,” AFP’s Brown writes.
The high prices you see at the pump aren’t just some fluke or accident. These prices are a direct result of poor policy in Washington, D.C.
Rather than right their wrongs, we are instead seeing Washington’s bureaucrats point fingers and make decisions that further drive inflation. It’s time we, as Mississippians, step up to the plate and make the changes necessary to get our economy back on track.
The True Cost of Washington Tour is all about putting power back in the hands of the people. In the past week, the tour has been traveling around Mississippi to spread word on how we can work together, as Americans, to decrease the cost of living across our great state.
To get the conversation started and provide some much-needed relief to citizens, we’ve been dropping fuel prices at gas stations across the country to what they were before President Joe Biden took office. That means rolling back the price of fuel from its current average of $4.39 per gallon price tag, back down to $2.12 a gallon.
“I saw it as a blessing, and I had to come jump in line,” Forest, Mississippi resident Latoya Roberts told WJTV-TV during the True Cost Tour event.
How much of a blessing? Enough that it means, for residents like Helen Ely, that they don’t have to choose between going to church or eating this week. “I can’t even go to church but once a month,” she told WLBT-TV. “I don’t have the gas to go to church and go get food too. So one got to go.” This is a choice no American should have to make.
Not to mention, these mind-boggling levels of inflation aren’t just affecting those filling up at the pump. It’s affecting everyone from the truckers delivering fuel to stations to the owners of the stations themselves.
“I got notices today that my candy bars, Hershey and Mars, both went up,” the owner of Forest’s Cox Chevron, Vance Cox, told WTOK News. “They went up 15 percent across the board on their candy bars, so the cost of inflation is really hurting everybody no matter what you do.”
We realize that paying Vance to lower gas prices for the day at his store and helping Helen fill up so she doesn’t have to choose between church and her next meal is just a temporary fix to a longstanding problem.
That’s why The True Cost of Washington Tour offers lasting solutions to not just rising gas costs but also the other areas where Mississippi’s 11.6% inflation is affecting residents. That includes solutions to the extra $430 each American is spending on groceries every year, the over $2 per gallon price hike Mississippians are paying for gas since Biden took office, and the almost $6,000 a year each Mississippian is paying to maintain the same living standard they had last year.
Our economic policy needs an overhaul. We must unleash our country’s energy abundance, end Washington’s wasteful spending, and ignite innovation. So how do we do it?
As we explained to Vance, Helena, Latoya and others we met at the pumps — it’s all about grassroots involvement. That means contacting your Congressmen, signing petitions, volunteering with your local Americans for Prosperity chapters, and ultimately, showing Washington we refuse to pay more to get less.
Come down and meet us at the pumps as we travel around Mississippi. Tell us your story, fill up with gas, and join us as we fight inflation with real-world solutions. We look forward to seeing you down the road!
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Submitted by Starla Brown. She is the state director of Americans for Prosperity-Mississippi.
Guest Editorial
