[fennecfoxen]

In principle, fiscal policy (taxing, spending) can substitute with monetary policy to some extent, and achieve many of the same goals, yes! But you'd be hard-pressed to find an economist who describes either recent or proposed fiscal policies of the Biden administration as something that's great at being remarkably anti-inflationary. Student loan forgiveness, for instance — some may say it's a worthy policy, but it's definitely freeing up money to be used on other things, and that's something that increases price pressures. I'm not sure it's on the table.

There's other disadvantages in that the impact of fiscal policy is usually somewhat on the slow side, leaving a risk that your fiscal tightening hits as you enter the recession or your fiscal stimulus hits as the economy is already booming after the recession. So it's not quite that simple. Take the case of the Inflation Reduction Act, for instance; it purports to reduce inflation by "making a historic down payment on the deficit". Let's take this at face value just to limit any possibility for argument: maybe that'll help!!! but ... if you look closely, this is actually kind of spread out over the next ten years, while we have real inflation now. Does it have an impact? Maybe. Does it have an impact today? Probably not as strong as one would like.