House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has defended the trillions of dollars in COVID-19 pandemic aid passed by Democrats amid claims by Republican lawmakers and experts that it fueled the current cost-of-living crisis.

In an interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, when asked if she had any regrets over the unprecedented levels of fiscal and monetary spending, Pelosi said the funding was essential to ensure that people survived during the pandemic.

“No, absolutely not, because that was necessary for people to survive,” Pelosi said. “The point is that when you reduce unemployment, it’s inflationary. That is a fact.”

Republican lawmakers and many economists have argued that President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which included $1,400 stimulus checks and generous expansions to unemployment insurance, further fueled soaring inflation.

In March, four economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco estimated that the rescue plan had raised inflation by about 3 percentage points by the end of 2021.