Why Is Everything So Expensive? Inflation and FL-14 Families

Ask any family in Brandon, Riverview, Sun City Center, Valrico, or Plant City what changed about their household budget over the last four years and the answer comes back the same way: everything costs more, and the money does not stretch the way it used to. The grocery cart that ran $180 in 2020 runs $230 today. The auto insurance bill that used to be a small line item now competes with the mortgage payment. The utility bill that used to be predictable now spikes every summer. The retirement budget that worked perfectly on paper three years ago has been compressed by costs nobody projected.

This is not bad luck. The cost-of-living crisis facing FL-14 families is the predictable result of specific policy decisions made in Washington — and that means it is the kind of crisis Congress can actually do something about, if Congress chooses to. After nine terms — eighteen years — Kathy Castor has voted consistently with Democratic leadership on the spending bills and policy choices that produced this inflation. The families of Hillsborough County are still paying the bill.

What’s Actually Driving Inflation

Inflation, at its simplest, is what happens when more dollars chase the same supply of goods and services. When the federal government spends roughly $5 trillion above its tax revenue and the Federal Reserve effectively finances that spending by purchasing the resulting Treasury debt, new money enters the economy without any new production behind it. Each dollar already in circulation buys a little less. The price level rises across the board. Headline inflation reached 9.1% on a year-over-year basis in June 2022 — the highest reading in four decades — and even after subsequent monetary tightening, the cumulative price increases of the last several years have not been undone.

Three forces have layered on top of the spending-and-money-printing core:

• Pandemic-era supply chain disruption. Global shipping bottlenecks, factory shutdowns, and labor shortages restricted the supply side of the economy precisely while federal stimulus was expanding demand. The price response was severe.
• Energy policy. Federal energy decisions that constrained domestic oil and gas production raised input costs across every sector — every grocery item moves on a truck that runs on diesel, every home is heated and cooled with electricity drawn from a grid where natural gas remains the largest single fuel.
• Regulatory burden. Federal regulations that increased compliance costs for small and mid-sized businesses had to be passed through to consumer prices, particularly in food, construction, and trucking.

Understanding these drivers matters because the policy responses available to Congress are different for each one. Pretending inflation just happened — or blaming “greedy corporations” — produces no policy that actually lowers prices.

How Inflation Hit Hillsborough Families

The national inflation numbers translate into very specific household pain across FL-14:

• Groceries. Food-at-home prices rose roughly 25% between 2020 and 2023 according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. A family spending $800 a month on groceries in 2020 was spending $1,000 by 2023 for the same basket — and most of that increase has not reversed.
• Housing. Median home prices across Hillsborough County roughly doubled between 2019 and 2023 before partially stabilizing. First-time buyers in Brandon, Riverview, and FishHawk face mortgage payments that no household budget built around 2019 prices was designed to absorb. Rents followed.
• Utilities and energy. Electricity rates across Florida have risen meaningfully, driven by fuel costs and infrastructure spending. Summer cooling bills in Sun City Center and Apollo Beach hit retirees on fixed incomes especially hard.
• Insurance. Florida’s homeowners insurance crisis compounds the cost-of-living squeeze in a way most national coverage understates. A premium that doubled or tripled is, in practical household-budget terms, indistinguishable from any other inflation — it is dollars out of the same paycheck.
• Small business. Operating cost increases — labor, materials, freight, insurance — forced price increases at the consumer level across the small businesses that anchor Plant City, Valrico, and the rest of the FL-14 commercial corridor. The small business owner did not get rich; the customer paid more, and the owner kept the same margin or less.

Every one of these effects falls hardest on the same households: working families, retirees, and small business owners. The political class in Washington that voted for the spending choices behind the inflation has been largely insulated from its consequences. The families of FL-14 have not.

The Federal Levers Congress Can Pull

Inflation has a mix of monetary, fiscal, and structural causes. The federal levers most relevant to Congress are these:

• Spending discipline. The single most important inflation lever Congress controls is the federal budget. Stop adding trillion-dollar emergency spending packages on top of an already-imbalanced baseline. Stop financing new spending with debt that the Federal Reserve absorbs. Match spending to revenue across the cycle.
• A balanced budget amendment. A constitutional balanced budget amendment — pegging federal spending to federal revenue with limited, defined exceptions for genuine emergencies — would impose the same fiscal discipline on Washington that 49 of 50 states already operate under. John Peters supports a balanced budget amendment and will vote for it on day one.
• Expanded domestic energy production. Lower energy input costs flow through every sector. Permitting reform, leasing on federal lands and offshore, and a federal posture that treats American oil, natural gas, and refining capacity as strategic assets — not embarrassments to be apologized for — directly reduce inflation pressure.
• Regulatory relief for small businesses. Federal regulatory burden on small and mid-sized employers — paperwork, compliance, indirect costs — gets passed through to consumer prices. Targeted regulatory rollback on the heaviest small-business burdens reduces operating costs and consumer prices simultaneously.
• State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction restoration. The SALT deduction cap imposed in 2017 disproportionately hurt middle-class homeowners in higher-tax states and effectively raised the federal tax burden on a swath of families that includes Florida households with significant property tax exposure. Restoring or lifting the SALT cap is a direct middle-class tax cut.

These are not theoretical levers. They are policies that Congress has voted on, in some form, multiple times. The reason they have not been delivered is that the current Congress — and a representative who has been part of it for eighteen years — has not made them a priority.

After Nine Terms, Why FL-14 Hasn’t Felt Relief

The inflation that has reshaped budgets across Florida’s 14th Congressional District did not happen in a year. It built up across multiple Congresses, multiple budget cycles, and multiple votes that Kathy Castor cast with Democratic leadership. The $5 trillion in pandemic-era spending — the spending that produced the monetary expansion that produced the inflation — was bipartisan in places and partisan in places, but it was passed and signed into law by people who treated the inflationary risk as either acceptable or invisible.

Castor’s voting record on the major spending bills of the period is consistent with her caucus. There is no surprise in that. The surprise — for FL-14 families paying for it — is the absence of any Castor-led federal initiative on cost of living that has actually reduced prices. The fiscal discipline votes have not been there. The energy production votes have not been there. The small-business regulatory relief votes have not been there. After eighteen years, the federal cost-of-living delivery for Hillsborough County is a record of the policies that drove the prices up — not the policies that pulled them down.

What John Peters Will Fight For

The inflation problem has solutions. They are not painless and they are not instant — but they exist, and they are within Congress’s authority. John Peters will:

1. Vote for a constitutional balanced budget amendment as a first-day priority and work to build the coalition needed to send it to the states.
2. Vote against new emergency spending packages that are not paid for and that add to the debt trajectory.
3. Vote for permitting reform, federal leasing reform, and the policy posture that supports expanded American oil, natural gas, and refining capacity.
4. Vote for targeted regulatory relief that lowers small business operating costs.
5. Vote to restore or lift the SALT deduction cap as a middle-class tax cut.

The families of Brandon, Riverview, Sun City Center, Valrico, FishHawk, Plant City, and the rest of FL-14 deserve a representative who treats the cost-of-living crisis as the central economic emergency it is — and who votes accordingly every time the question comes up. Not just at election time. Every time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is everything so expensive right now?

Current high prices are the cumulative result of pandemic-era federal deficit spending of roughly $5 trillion financed through Federal Reserve bond purchases, layered with global supply chain disruption and energy policy choices that raised input costs across the economy. Headline inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 and even after subsequent monetary tightening, the cumulative price increases since 2020 — over 20% on most baskets — have not reversed.

What actually causes inflation?

Inflation occurs when the supply of money expands faster than the supply of goods and services. The recent inflation cycle had three reinforcing drivers: federal deficit spending financed by Federal Reserve bond purchases (effective monetary expansion), pandemic-era supply chain disruption, and federal energy policy choices that raised input costs across every sector that ships, drives, heats, or cools.

How has inflation affected Hillsborough County and FL-14?

Hillsborough families have absorbed the full force of the national inflation cycle. Median home prices in Brandon, Riverview, and FishHawk roughly doubled between 2019 and 2023. Grocery costs are up roughly 25% since 2020. Utility bills, auto insurance, and homeowners insurance — the latter often doubling or tripling — have compounded the pressure. Retirees in Sun City Center and Apollo Beach on fixed incomes are particularly exposed.

What is a balanced budget amendment?

A balanced budget amendment is a proposed constitutional amendment requiring federal spending to not exceed federal revenue in normal years, with limited and defined exceptions for genuine emergencies. Forty-nine of fifty U.S. states operate under some form of balanced budget requirement. A federal balanced budget amendment would impose the same fiscal discipline on Washington and structurally reduce the deficit-driven monetary expansion that fuels inflation.

What can Congress realistically do to lower the cost of living?

Congress controls real levers: spending discipline that ends trillion-dollar deficit packages, a balanced budget amendment, permitting and leasing reform that expands domestic energy production and lowers input costs, targeted regulatory relief on small business, and restoration of the SALT deduction cap as a direct middle-class tax cut. Each lever has been voted on in Congress in some form. The reason none has delivered relief in FL-14 is the absence of a representative pushing them.

Stand for affordable living in FL-14

The cost-of-living crisis is the central economic issue facing Hillsborough County families. Real federal policy responses exist — they just need a representative willing to vote for them, every time.

Donate to John Peters’ campaign or contact the campaign to get involved. See John’s full plan on economic growth and the issues that matter most to FL-14.