Bob Casey: Past time to reign in corporations ‘jacking up their prices’

US Sen Bob Casey continued calling out corporate greed and price gouging at a canvass launch in the City of Lancaster on Sunday.  

Maintaining the pressure on price gouging and corporate greed was one US Sen. Bob Casey’s (D-Pennsylvania) main themes at a campaign event in the city of Lancaster on Sunday. 

Casey kicked off his campaign’s road trip across the commonwealth by attending a canvass launch ahead of Tuesday’s primary election at the Lancaster County Democratic Party’s headquarters. 

“In terms of where we are versus four years ago, I think we’re in much better shape now in terms of the economy being strong, unemployment being low,” Casey said when asked if the country is in a better position now as compared to four years ago. “The pandemic is behind us because of votes that I cast to lift up families and to support schools to be reopened.”

However, Casey acknowledged that there’s still a long way to go to lower costs for families. 

“We have a long way to go to ratchet down costs for families,” Casey said. “We have more work to do on that.” 

Corporate price gouging cost the average Pennsylvania family $6,740 in 2021 and 2022, according to a report published by Casey’s office, and during that time, increases in corporate profits outpaced inflation by a 74% to 14% margin. 

Greedflation and shrinkflation have become two main issues in Casey’s bid for reelection. Greedflation happens when corporations raise their prices faster than the rate of inflation to increase profits, while shrinkflation occurs when food companies shrink package sizes and increase prices. 

“You got these big food conglomerates and other big multinational corporations jacking up the price of food, jacking up the price of household items,” Casey said. 

“It’s not the local groceries that are doing it. It’s these big corporations. The same corporations that got a big tax cut in 2017 from the Republicans in Congress. Those same corporations are jacking up their prices.”

Casey is running against Republican challenger Dave McCormick, a former Connecticut-based hedge fund manager, in the fall election. 

McCormick was the president of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds from 2009 to 2020 and the CEO from 2020 to 2022, and rents a $16 million mansion on Connecticut’s Gold Coast. 

The Westport mansion includes a 1,500-bottle wine cellar, an elevator and a private beach front resort on the Long Island Sound. 

“[McCormick] lied about living in Pennsylvania. We know that, and he continues to try to make that case that he’s living here. He doesn’t live here,” Casey said. 

“Here’s a candidate who’s an out-of-state candidate being supported by out-of-state billionaires. We don’t want a senator like that. We want a senator who represents the people of our state and actually lives here.”