[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 55 (Tuesday, March 29, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1812-S1813]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Inflation

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, Democrats' massive inflation is an 
inescapable, painful, daily reality for working families. These policy 
failures have hammered my home State of Kentucky. Last year, even as 
many Kentuckians earned raises, prices skyrocketed faster. Used car 
prices shot up 40 percent in the Commonwealth last year. In Louisville, 
the gas to drive those cars costs more than a dollar more per gallon 
today than a year ago.

[[Page S1813]]

  In typical Bluegrass fashion, neighbors are helping one another as 
best they can. According to the owner of Parkette Drive-In in 
Lexington, even as prices for ingredients like chicken have nearly 
doubled, he has chosen to cut back as much as possible on his end to 
avoid raising prices for customers.
  But as hard as Kentuckians try, Democrats' reckless policies are 
coming home to roost. As one father of four who lost his job following 
the devastating Mayfield tornado in December put it, ``there's no 
stretching money at this point.''
  An outright majority of Americans say inflation is not at all under 
control. Seven in 10 say our economy is in bad shape, and by all 
accounts, they know exactly whom to blame for a year of painful 
challenges.
  Sixty-three percent of Americans, nearly two-thirds, say they 
disapprove of how President Biden is handling the economy, and that 
number just keeps rising.
  But Washington Democrats do not appear to have gotten the message. 
The Biden administration's new budget proposal leans even further into 
the policies that got us here in the first place.
  Even as President Biden has already presided over soaring prices for 
gas and home heating fuels, he wants massive new tax hikes on American-
made fossil fuels. He wants to skyrocket discretionary domestic 
spending on a whole catalog of liberal wish-list items, and he wants to 
compound the pain on our economy by slapping the biggest tax hikes in 
American history right on top of all of it.
  So the past year has taught us how painful Washington Democrats' 
policies can be for hard-working Americans. The administration needs to 
stop trying to dig this hole any deeper.