House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has laid out the devastating results of runaway government spending on the middle class and why it’s so important to claw back lost ground for the average American, who has “received a pay cut for 24 consecutive months . . . as inflation has persisted.”

He also noted the average American family has lost the equivalent of more than $7,000 in annual income.

There is a direct link between spending, borrowing, and printing trillions of dollars, and these disastrous results for Americans.

President Biden has spent trillions of dollars the nation didn’t have.

These unchecked costs drove the deficit to record highs and pushed the debt over $31 trillion.

The Federal Reserve simply created the money for the government to spend, and that devalued the dollar with four-decade-high inflation.

That incredible increase in consumer prices explains why workers feel poorer although they’re making more money.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average weekly earnings are up 9% since Biden took office, but consumer prices have risen 14.9% over that same time.

The result is that real earnings (meaning earnings adjusted for inflation), are down 5.1% under Biden.

For the typical family with two parents working, their combined weekly paychecks are up about $200, but that money has lost so much purchasing power from inflation that it’s as if their weekly pay has shrunk by more than $100.

The average working American family has lost $5,600 in purchasing power under Biden because of rampant inflation.

Average real earnings have never returned to the level they were when Biden took office — it has been almost entirely downhill.

Yet as if the current doldrums were some kind of achievement, the White House released a statement noting that real earnings are higher today than they were nine months ago.

That’s technically true, but only because June 2022 was the single month of Biden’s presidency when real earnings (down 5.2%) were worse than today (down 5.1%).

When runaway spending finally caused so much inflation that even the bureaucrats couldn’t ignore it, the Fed belatedly began raising interest rates to put out the fire.

While that helped slow the rise in prices, it created other pain for families by raising borrowing costs.

Those higher borrowing costs on everything from mortgages to credit cards and auto loans to student loans have further increased the average family’s expenses by $1,500 per year.

The combined effect is the equivalent of a $7,100 cut in annual purchasing power.

That’s more than a month’s pay for half the households in the country.

And it’s worth noting that’s just the average — some people are even worse off.

If you’re trying to buy a home today, the monthly mortgage payment on a median-priced home is 82% higher than when Biden took office.

If the pain is to end, the spending must be reined in.

That is why McCarthy’s fight over the debt ceiling is so crucial.

The speaker and his congressional allies need to hold the line and return some modicum of fiscal sanity to the Capitol.

If they don’t, the spending sprees will continue, and so will the pain, as the government borrows into oblivion.

E. J. Antoni is an economist at the Heritage Foundation.