Florida is apparently giving what amounts to stimulus payments to a fairly large segment of its population in order to offset the impacts of inflation. When it was correctly suggested that this action would increase demand and thus drive up inflation, DeSantis’ press secretary reportedly said that inflation was caused by large federal deficits and by printing too much money, neither of which was relevant to the Florida stimulus.
It’s sort of hard to square this rationale with the fact that the country had an enormous deficit, ultra-low interest rates, and no inflation during the pandemic stage of the Trump administration. Today, we have a much smaller deficit, higher interest rates, and significantly higher inflation. DeSantis bucks will make matters slightly worse, just as the overly generous Biden stimulus payments (which, it should be noted, took the form of a tax cut) did in their day.