Well, I don't see a common sense explanation as to why the rate of increase should decrease either. We could also say, "Eventually, the rate of increase will go down anyway, in the absence of any action from the fed."
This is true, this is at least appealing to common sense. But I don't see how that excess cash was going into spending more on food and gas.
If I run a supermarket and raise prices, and people like lettuce, if they keep buying the lettuce, because $3.75 lettuce is still worth it compared to $2.00 lettuce, well, CPI can increase a lot, and demand appears to be inelastic, and interest rate increases did nothing to reverse CPI.