[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 199 (Tuesday, November 16, 2021)]
[House]
[Page H6270]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      AMERICA'S ECONOMIC FIRESTORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Arrington) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I can't for the life of me understand why 
my Democrat colleagues insist on passing this multitrillion-dollar 
monstrosity of a tax-and-spend bill that not only I, but the American 
people believe will be an economic and societal disaster on so many 
levels.
  Mr. Speaker, the American people have spoken in countless polls and 
surveys and elections, not just in Virginia, New York, and New Jersey, 
but in my State of Texas where House seats have flipped from Democrat 
to Republican for the first time ever. As recent as last week, a 
Democrat changed parties to Republican because they cannot explain the 
current policies that are destructive to the ends of recovery and 
support the American people's freedom and our way of life.
  They said as clearly as they can: No more Big Government control over 
our lives. That is what they said in Virginia. No more socialist 
spending our country into bankruptcy. No more growing the government at 
the expense of our freedoms and our children's future.
  Mr. Speaker, Virginia, a blue State, one-third of the electorate said 
the economy was their number one issue. Biden won that by 10 points. 
They voted for a Republican Governor. Two-thirds of the American people 
in recent polls have said that the Biden economic plans are bad and 
they have no confidence in his policies. They connect his policies with 
the current economic conditions. The majority of Americans attribute 
the inflation to Biden's failed policies, just like they do the 
disastrous border and the debacle in Afghanistan and in the generic 
ballot. The generic ballot among registered voters, there is a 10-point 
spread, if the elections were held today, between Democrats and 
Republicans. That is the highest in 40 years ever recorded.
  The American people are speaking and they are crying out to their 
country's leaders: Relent. Relent. But they have made the connection 
between the policies and the disastrous effects in their lives and in 
the life of their country.
  Enhanced employment benefits, in other words, paying people more to 
be on unemployment than to be at work, coupled with wasteful partisan 
multitrillion-dollar spending packages under the guise of COVID relief 
have created an economic firestorm, runaway inflation.
  Real wages, 7 of the 9 months this President has been in office, have 
gone down. Real wages have gone down. There has been an inflation surge 
to the point of double-digit inflation in the last month, which have 
put us, over the year, at a 30-year high.
  Gas prices are up 50 percent. We are almost a million jobs short of 
what President Biden promised as a result of that blue State bailout 
that he called COVID relief. This is the solution that the Democrats 
are offering.
  Let's raise prices even more and lower wages by taxing the American 
people.
  Let's further extend our recession by chasing jobs overseas and 
putting the highest tax rates in the developed world on the job 
creators of the United States of America.
  Let's burden small businesses with higher taxes and less people 
willing to work.
  Let's drive labor participation further down by removing the work 
requirement.
  Let's trap more people in poverty and the cycle of dependency on 
government by removing the incentives to work.
  Let's wipe out 20 or 30 percent of the workforce by thrusting a Big 
Government mandate that is unconstitutional, overreaching, and would 
destroy any prospects for recovery.
  Mr. Speaker, this was supposed to be about income inequality, but if 
you read the tax bill--and I don't know how my progressive colleagues 
can look the American people in the eyes with a straight face and say 
that this is not a swampy, special-interest package of the century, 
because they have tax breaks for the wealthy by raising the SALT 
deductions. They give tax breaks to green industry, to unions, to 
plaintiffs' attorneys, to media corporations. That is all legitimate. 
That is all true.
  If you look close enough, that is what this is about. Not to mention 
they stuffed the stocking with early Christmas presents for 
progressives and political allies of the Democratic Party--amnesty for 
8 million people while our southern border is melting down; 
unionization of every employee, every employer, every State in the 
country; Obamacare subsidies for people making hundreds of thousands of 
dollars.
  Mr. Speaker, the list is too long. I implore my Democrat colleagues 
to relent and stop this. Let's get back to work on behalf of the 
American people.

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