Washington, D.C. — State legislators are working to fight “greedflation” — a problem in which corporations make record profits while raising prices.
On Feb. 15, Senators Bob Casey, Elizabeth Warren, and Tammy Baldwin along with Representative Jan Schakowski introduced the Price Gouging Prevention Act to Congress.
The bill proposes a new a federal ban on “grossly excessive price increases” while authorizing the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state Attorneys General to enforce the ban.
A similar bill was introduced in 2022 , but died without a vote.
Sen. Bob Casey, Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee on Children & Families, has been investigating the price shifts of large corporations and their impact on inflation since November of 2023.
Casey’s data states that from July 2020 through July 2022, inflation rose by 14% while corporate profits rose by more than 74%, and Federal Reserve research found corporate profits accounted for all of inflation from July 2020 through July 2021 and 41% of all inflation from July 2020 through July 2022.