That's not necessarily true. The stagflation of the 70's is an example of bad economy, high inflation. Some putative authorities think we may be heading into something like that again. I'm not endorsing that view, but it is a thing.
The real problem here, though, is the debt, which has become essentially unpayable absent inflation in that other, more critical meaning of the term: government money creation by fiat. They're doing that all the time, of course (e.g., the money supply doubled between 2000 and 2012; it increased 36% between 2007 and 2012, pretty much all "quantitativ easing"). Bad economic leadership.
Peter Boettke said it best: "Economics puts parameters on people's utopias." He was of course speaking of rational economics, something that nobody in power seems to give a flip about.