Rand Paul argued that Americans’ affordability concerns are fundamentally an inflation problem, saying rising costs stem from persistent federal deficits and Federal Reserve policy rather than a separate pricing issue. In a Tuesday post on X, the Kentucky senator said the U.S. runs a roughly $2 trillion annual deficit and that the Fed (U.S. central bank) buys about a third of that debt by creating new money, a process he said expands the supply of dollars and erodes purchasing power. He contrasted that with gold, saying its supply does not rise when Congress spends more. Paul also linked today’s cost pressures to a broader decline in the dollar’s value over the past century after a Monday visit to Fort Knox. The comments land amid a wider market debate over whether investors should favor gold or Bitcoin as protection against inflation and heavy U.S. borrowing.