Peach Tree Times

President Joe Biden's administration has been pushing Russia's war in Ukraine and a #PutinPriceHike narrative, but Georgians may recall an online news portal's assertions otherwise weeks before the invasion.

The online news portal Heisenberg Report, a market and politics news portal founded in 2016, said in a social media post in February that Biden "owns" rising electricity prices.

"Biden now owns the second-largest monthly increase in electricity prices in U.S. history," the Feb. 10 Twitter post said.

Russia invaded Ukraine about two weeks later.

The Heisenberg Report provided no back story or backup for the assertion in its Twitter post but it's no shock to Georgia families that rising electricity costs are exasperating the pressure on their wallets, with inflation continuing to whittle away at their money's spending power. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that last year, U.S. residential electric customers paid 4.3% more in average nominal retail electricity prices than they had the year prior, the fastest increase since 2008.

EIA also reported that this past January the average price of electricity in Georgia was 11.63 cents per kilowatt-hour, a dramatic increase over the 10.94 cents paid in January of last year, a 6.3% year-over-year increase.

According to a Bureau of Labor Statistic's Consumer Price Index report, the national electricity index rose 11.1% over the 12-month period that ended March, with a 2.2% increase in the index between February to March alone. The same report found an 8.5% annual increase on all items over the same period, the largest increase in more than 40 years.

The average residential electricity bill in Georgia is $125.72 per month, according to data from SaveOnEnergy, which ranked Georgia 30th among all 50 U.S. states for its electrical costs.

A recent national poll by the Senate Opportunity Fund found that six in ten Americans blame the President for the nation's ongoing inflation. The poll, conducted March 15-17, surveyed 800 likely voters in this year's national general election, asking them, "Thinking about the job that President Biden has done with regard to inflation, how would you describe the job he has done on this issue?" About 60% of the respondents said Biden has done a poor job, 35% said he has done a good job and 5% had no opinion.

The president blamed rising prices in the United States on Russia's war in Ukraine, Fox News reported last month.  It was a member of Biden's administration, White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield, who first came up with the #PutinPriceHike narrative, blaming Russia's invasion of its western neighbor - not the Biden Administration - for rising prices.

Biden continues to blame Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as well as the still ongoing COVID pandemic, for rising prices. In a Facebook post on April 20, Biden said he knows "that families are still struggling with higher prices."

"I grew up in a family where if the price of gas went up, we felt it," Biden said in the post. "Let's be absolutely clear about why prices are high right now: COVID and Vladimir Putin. Putin's invasion of Ukraine has driven up gas prices and food prices all over the world."