Libertarian candidate for president Chase Oliver said the price of food at the Iowa State Fair and at grocery stores is up, and the rising cost of houses is putting those out of reach for many people. He blamed deficit spending by the federal government. Oliver said it devalues the dollar, sparks inflation and amounts to a “hidden tax” on ordinary Americans.
“It’s because the government is making our dollar worth less and less and less each year, because they run deficit spending to the tune of trillions of dollars,” he said. “And they have to print money to make up for that. What that does is it devalues the dollars in your pocket.”
Chase told a small crowd gathered for his speech on The Des Moines Register’s Political Soapbox at the State Fair that he would veto any unbalanced budget Congress might send him. The U.S. hasn’t had a balanced federal budget since the Clinton administration.
Chase was nominated earlier this year at the Libertarian Party’s national convention after seven rounds of voting. He ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Congress in Georgia in 2020, and in that state’s U.S. Senate election in 2022. He’s currently on the ballot in about three dozen states. His campaign said it filed paperwork for Iowa this month.