April 17, 2026 01:33 PM UTC

Everything Costs More: Gabe Evans Celebrated the Numbers Right Before He Broke Them

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• by: ProgressNow Colorado

Back in February, Rep. Gabe Evans was in the mood to celebrate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics had just reported that year-over-year inflation came in at 2.4%, its lowest level in five years. Republicans in Congress rushed to take a victory lap, and Evans was among them. On Twitter, Evans crowed that thanks to House Republicans’ leadership, “Core inflation is ticking down. The economy is stabilizing. America is moving in the right direction.”

Then the United States and Israel began bombing Iran — and the economy that Evans was busy taking credit for started coming apart at the seams.

What followed was not just a gas price story. It was, and continues to be, a story about the price of everything.

Rising oil prices feed into inflation by increasing transportation, manufacturing, and logistics costs across the entire economy. When a barrel of oil goes from $70 to over $100–as it did in the opening weeks of the Iran war–that cost increase doesn’t stay at the gas station. It travels up the supply chain and lands on the shelves of every grocery store, hardware store, and big-box retailer in America.

Before the war, economists at Nationwide were projecting inflation to average around 2.8%. After the conflict began, that forecast jumped to approximately 4.3% for the second quarter of 2026. That is not a rounding error. That’s the difference between affordable and out of reach for millions of families already running on empty.

The Numbers Were Already Fragile

Let’s be honest about what Evans was actually celebrating in February. The 2.4% CPI figure was real, but it was just a snapshot. The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, was up 2.8% from a year before, while core PCE–which excludes food and energy–came in at 3%, well above the Fed’s 2% target. Wholesale prices rose sharply in February as well, with Producer Price Index (PPI) inflation reaching 3.4%–the most since February 2025–and core PPI at 3.9%, a warning that cost pressures were building even before the first bomb fell on Iran.

As one economist put it, “inflation is a lagging indicator, and this report feels more lagged than most.” The February data was already outdated before the ink dried. The war made sure of that.

The war didn’t cause all of this. But it poured gasoline — quite literally — on a fire that was already burning.

What Gabe Evans Said When Asked About It

Gabe Evans had every chance to be on the right side. When Colorado families wanted to know why their grocery bills were about to climb, why shipping costs were rising, why their utility bills were already surging before the war even started — Evans could have said, “this war has costs, and I’m working to protect you from them.” Or he could have said, “I’m pushing back on the administration to find an exit strategy.”

When CBS News Colorado asked Evans and Energy Secretary Chris Wright whether Weld County’s status as a major energy exporter could be leveraged to lower gas prices for local residents, Evans replied: “The issue in Colorado is the state of Colorado has declared war on oil, gas and coal. The biggest barrier to bringing prices down and actually being able to generate affordable, available, reliable electricity and other forms of power is all of the different mandates that is coming from the state of Colorado.”

Gas prices had just spiked by more than 50 cents a gallon in a single week because the United States went to war with the world’s fifth-largest oil producer — and Evans blamed Colorado’s renewable energy standards.

The Accountability That Evans Won’t Take

Trump himself broadcast his fundamental cluelessness on the higher costs Americans are facing by bragging about America “making lots of money” on skyrocketing oil prices, after a year of Trump and Republicans like Evans celebrating a decline in prices at the pump.

The cost-of-living crisis was supposed to be Evans’ signature issue. It’s on his campaign website. It’s in his floor speeches. It was in the tweet he posted celebrating $1.69 gas. But affordability, it turns out, was only a winning issue for Evans when someone else was in charge. Now that his party owns both the war and its economic consequences, the message has quietly shifted: blame the Democrats, trust the process, wait for victory.

Here’s something no American wants to hear: prices are surging again, and high inflation could be with us for quite some time. Americans have less savings, more debt, and more cynicism. They felt it when prices were high under Biden. They are feeling it again now.

November is coming. The receipts are already in.