Congress seeing how inflation is hitting the US heartland

Allison Harris

Updated: Mar 7, 2023 / 11:26 AM CST

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(NewsNation) — As Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testifies in front of the Senate Banking Committee on inflation Tuesday, some members of Congress are hitting the heartland to see how high prices are affecting the area.

Right now, the inflation rate remains high at 6.4%. Federal Reserve officials say they would like to see that go back down to 2%.

Meanwhile, the House Committee on Ways and Means is in Oklahoma to hear from farmers, small business owners, workers and those in the U.S. energy sector on the challenges they are facing and how they think Congress can help.

One of the people speaking in front of the committee is Chuck Mills, the owner and president of the Mills Machine Company, Inc., which sells drilling tools.

The third-generation business owner from Shawnee, Oklahoma, said he was hopeful the economic situation would get better in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic got under control. But years later, “prices continue to go up” — as well as costs.

Mills says for his business, prices have increased for eight months straight.

“It’s really, really, really hard to stay in business,” he told NewsNation. “We apologize to our customers all the time for the prices that we have to charge, but we can only pass it along if we want to stay in business. So it’s been very difficult.”