Schrier: Companies ‘taking advantage’ of people through inflation

With the 2022 midterm elections around the corner, politicians are still trying to reach voters who have yet to submit their ballots.

Rep. Kim Schrier went on The Gee and Ursula Show to talk about why the voters of the 8th district should send her back to the U.S. House of Representatives after a divisive debate with challenger Matt Larkin.

Schrier, Larkin debate who is too extreme for WA voters

Schrier addressed the three biggest topics on voters’ minds: Crime and police staffing, the repeal of Roe v. Wade, and the rising inflation and the economy sliding into a recession.

One of the accusations Larkin made against Schrier was her support of the Defund the Police movement, which gained traction after the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Schrier says that she has never been involved in the movement and that funding the police is an important offset to rising crime rates across the country.

Despite this, a claim that Larkin made — brought up by Gee — was that Schrier voted to defund the police by $22 million, a claim which she says has zero factual accuracies.

“First of all, I have never supported defunding the police, I would never do that. It’s an absurd idea and I stand with our police,” Schrier said. “And I think that you can have accountability. At the same time, you say, look, we need law enforcement to enforce the rules in our communities, and especially right now with crime on the rise.”

Another point of contention is the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, allowing 13 states to issue abortion bans, and whether or not Schrier would work to codify the right to abortion through legislative means.

“It is my goal to also make Roe the law of the land because I trust women, I trust the women of Washington state and across this country to make the right decisions for their own bodies and to not have government make that decision for them,” Schrier said.

The other issue affecting all Americans is the issue of rising inflation. Schrier says that the real issue is gas companies and grocers abusing the state of the economy to gouge prices from the public, something that she has worked to stop in her time in the House.

“Let me tell you that on the economy, I first want to be clear that much of what we are seeing is gouging. And you don’t get to just jack up prices and blame it on inflation,” Schrier said. “I just want people to understand that inflation is not just a mysterious thing, that it also happens when people are just taking advantage of an environment where people expect prices to go up.”