Part of Kamala Harris's economic plan
has been this idea about price gouging going after these individuals in the
corporate world that are hiking up prices.
And many are viewing that as potentially this going to usher in price controls.
What is your take on this issue? And can you name a company that is
currently price gouging? I'm glad you asked about this because I
think the vice president is moving in the right direction.
We believe in markets. I'm the chairman of the Senate Finance
Committee. I believe in markets.
I believe in marketplace forces. That's always the best way to go.
But when markets are breaking down, you need some guardrails.
And that is what the vice president is talking about.
Now, I'm going to be going home. I'm going to be flying all night to have
town hall meetings in rural Oregon. You know what folks are going to ask me
about? They're going to ask me about the
biggest grocery merger in American history.
You know, Kroger's and Albertsons. Do you think if you go through.
Well, what I've said is I think we ought to kind of take a time out that I've
been part of the effort with Congresswoman Jayapal to say, let's have
kind of a recall on this decision for a while and think through how to come up
with a fair agreement. But what I can tell you is when you
know, milk is four, $4 a gallon and a lot of places meet $10 a pound, a lot of
people are saying get us a fair shake. And the concentration and consolidation
we've seen and seen in these food markets, I think is what we've got to
deal with. But prices have come to come down.
Walgreen's, target, all these places. Wal-Mart slashing their prices.
They see higher end consumers actually trading down to some of their softer
prices. And that was welcomed by the White
House. Isn't this all caused by inflation, not
corporate greed? Well, certainly worked.
We're coming out of COVID. There are a bunch of factors.
But what I can tell you, in my state, we're losing choices, for example, even
for buying medicine. You know, we have only a couple of big
pharmacies now. They consolidate and that's
anti-consumer. I'm a market oriented Democrat.
I want to come back to that. But I think when markets aren't going
very well, we need to have some guardrails and make sure we protect the
consumer.