The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose a record 9.1% in June compared to last year, the highest rise since 1981, according to the latest report.

Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Saks) joined WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program” to discuss the ongoing problem of rising prices.

“It’s pretty depressing,” he lamented. “It’s very, very similar to the Jimmy Carter administration, the circumstances we’re suffering.”

The congressman said he remembered what it was like when Carter was president and said President Joe Biden was making the same mistakes.

“I lived through that period of time,” he said, “and I remember the gas lines and the inflation and how insufferable it was, and, frankly, that’s the situation we’re in right now. This Biden administration is very much like the Jimmy Carter administration, and that’s unfortunate for our nation.”

While admitting the current economic situation wasn’t good, Rogers was able to share some optimism for the future.

“The Jimmy Carter administration gave us Ronald Reagan,” he argued, “and that’s the way I feel we’re going to come out of this Joe Biden administration. The country’s going to move toward a Ronald Reagan-type figure. I don’t know who it’s going to be, but I think there will be a dramatic reversal in the next Presidential election.”

He also admitted that even if Republicans took back the majority after the midterm elections, there was only so much they could accomplish under a Democratic president.

“[W]e’ll be able to do some good stuff,” he claimed, “but I go back to the Carter administration, and I want to manage expectations. The fact is we still have a very liberal president in the White House, and he’s still got influence, so there’s only so much we can do. We can stop a lot of bad stuff, we can put a lot of attention on things they are doing wrong, like, for example, with the border, the southwest border, but they still have the White House, and the White House has a lot of power. So it’s going to be two years from now before we can really turn things around.”

“When you go back to the Carter administration,” Rogers added, “it took Ronald Reagan two years to pull us out of that economic ditch, and then we had 10 years of incredible prosperity … while we will get the House and the Senate in the November elections, I’m pretty confident, it’s still going to be a tough hall to get us out of this situation.”

Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” Weekdays 9-11am on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee