[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 30 (Tuesday, February 15, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Page S681]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               INFLATION

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, at this time last year, Washington 
Democrats were beginning their quest to dump trillions of dollars in 
leftwing spending on a recovering economy that already had the 
preconditions for some inflation. Everybody warned Democrats to pump 
the brakes. Just weeks earlier, Republicans had already supported a 
smaller, targeted, bipartisan stimulus that had barely started to take 
effect. Even top liberal economists warned the Democrats' agenda could 
spark massive inflation.
  The consequences for working families have been particularly harsh. 
Essential goods have played an outsized role in driving up prices 
overall. It is harder to put dinner on the table when eggs, meat, and 
fish are 12 percent more expensive. It is harder to fill up cars with 
gas that is 40 percent more expensive and to heat a home with natural 
gas that has gone up 24 percent or fuel oil that has gone up 47 
percent. This is reality for millions of Americans. They are living it 
every single day.
  Yet the Biden administration seems less interested in trying to solve 
this problem than in trying to persuade families that the pain is 
actually just in their heads. One recent story reported that members of 
President Biden's team were ``seemingly mystified'' about why the 
American people weren't celebrating this economy.
  Well, if Washington Democrats spent 5 minutes talking to a middle-
class family, I am confident they would cease to be mystified. The 
middle 40 percent of American earners have seen their disposable 
incomes fall more than an entire percentage point over the last year--
entirely due to inflation. Any American who hasn't managed to secure an 
8-percent pay raise in the last year has actually received a real pay 
cut, thanks to Democrats' inflation.

  The American people are reporting their lowest consumer sentiment in 
over a decade. Seventy-five percent say our economy is doing badly. 
Almost 80 percent expect inflation to get worse. Six in ten say their 
family's income isn't keeping pace with their costs of living.
  These are not statistics the White House can wave away. We are 
actually talking about human pain. A working mother in Michigan said:

       I cannot buy the food that I would normally buy for my 
     family.

  In Washington State, a single mom of four who also cares for her 
elderly parents says she has had to take favorite family foods like 
frozen pizza and wings and make them ``more of a treat than just a 
regular meal.''
  This is where Democrats' policies have left working families.

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