[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 97 (Tuesday, June 7, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2797-S2798]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Inflation

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, the White House has apparently decided to 
spend June focusing on the economy.
  President Biden kicked things off with an op-ed in the Wall Street 
Journal entitled ``My Plan for Fighting Inflation.''
  Before he gets to the actual ``plan,'' though, the President spends 
the first half of the op-ed touting his supposed economic successes. As 
usual, he takes credit for the economy's recovery from COVID-related 
woes, even though the recovery was well underway before he became 
President and was a natural result of the economy reopening after COVID 
shutdowns.
  He touts job creation figures without mentioning the fact that 
businesses are struggling to find workers to fill jobs. He touts the 
number of new small business applications in 2021 without mentioning 
that small business optimism is at its lowest level since April 2020 at 
the height of the pandemic shutdowns. And he mentions ``millions of 
Americans getting jobs with better pay,'' while leaving out the fact 
that inflation continues to outstrip wage growth, meaning that, on 
average, Americans are experiencing a de facto pay cut.
  In all, he spends multiple paragraphs attempting to convince 
Americans that the economy is thriving, which I have to think feels 
pretty meaningless to the millions of Americans struggling with massive 
increases in the cost of gas, groceries, and other everyday goods.
  In fact, a poll released yesterday found that just 27 percent of 
Americans believe they have a good chance of improving their standard 
of living, and it is no wonder. The President can talk about his 
supposed economic achievements all he wants, but that means little to 
Americans who have seen their disposable income eaten up by price hikes 
or whose raise failed to keep even pace with the increase in the cost 
of living.
  And, of course, the President completely omits the fact that it was 
his economic plans that helped create our current inflation crisis in 
the first place. When President Biden took office, inflation was at 1.4 
percent, well within the Federal Reserve's target inflation rate of 2 
percent. Today, it is at 8.3 percent, near a 40-year high.
  And how did we get from there to here? In substantial part, via the 
President's so-called American Rescue Plan. Democrats' massive partisan 
spending spree flooded the economy with unnecessary government money, 
and the

[[Page S2798]]

economy overheated as a result. But that is not something the President 
mentions when he talks about fighting inflation.
  So what is the President's so-called plan to fight inflation?
  Well, after spending half the op-ed touting his supposed economic 
successes, the President finally gets to the plan part, and the first 
part of his three-part plan involves having someone else address 
inflation. Controlling inflation, the President says, is primarily the 
job of the Federal Reserve, and he is going to leave them alone to do 
that job.
  The next part of the President's plan involves things like fixing 
broken supply chains and boosting the productive capacity of our 
economy over time.
  Now, I am a big supporter of improving our supply chains, which is 
why I have introduced the Ocean Shipping Reform Act, which, hopefully, 
will pass the House of Representatives and head to the President's desk 
soon. But given that the President has so far demonstrated little 
progress in addressing supply chain challenges, I am not holding my 
breath waiting for the White House to take action.
  I am also a big fan of boosting the productive capacity of our 
economy. My concern is that the President fails to give any examples of 
how he might actually do that. He mentions high gas prices, but instead 
of talking about ways to address high energy prices by unleashing 
American energy production, he pivots to touting his release from the 
Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a highly temporary band aid that did next 
to nothing to address the cause of high gas prices, except for briefly 
causing their rise to what are record highs.
  He also claims Congress can help by passing his clean-energy tax 
credits and investments--which he says would result in a $500 decrease 
in utility bills for American families. First, nothing about the 
President's clean-energy tax credits is likely to drive down energy 
prices, especially in the near term, and Americans can't afford to 
wait.
  In fact, for Americans to take advantage of some of these credits, 
they would need to spend more money--on an electric car, for example--
which is how the administration suggests Americans deal with these 
historic gas prices.
  And the President's claim that his energy tax credits and investments 
would decrease utility bills for American families by $500 is 100 
percent false.
  And you don't have to take my word for it. The Washington Post Fact 
Checker column gave the President's claim four--four Pinocchios--a 
rating that the Post reserves for, and I quote, ``whoppers.''
  And if the President has the idea that his tax credits can somehow 
magically move the United States to a place that we can abandon gas and 
oil overnight, well, he has another thing coming. No matter how much 
Democrats might wish it were otherwise, the fact of the matter is that 
clean energy technology has simply not advanced to the point where we 
can replace all traditional energy resources with renewables. And 
pretending--pretending that we don't need gas and oil--or discouraging 
American oil and gas production will only result in higher energy 
prices for American consumers.
  If the President really wanted to reduce gas prices and ``boost the 
productive capacity of our economy over time,'' as he said in his op-
ed, he would embrace American energy production, including conventional 
energy production.
  Instead, he is doing the opposite. He continues to discourage 
domestic production of conventional energy sources that Americans rely 
on. And the result is likely to be continued high energy prices well 
into the future.
  Finally, the President turns to the third part of his plan to fight 
inflation, and that is reducing the deficit. Unfortunately, it is a 
little hard to take the President seriously on this issue. The 
President touts a Congressional Budget Office prediction that the 
deficit will fall by $1.7 trillion this year.
  What the President doesn't mention is that the reason this year's 
projected deficit drop looks so substantial is because Democrats 
inflated the deficit last year with their American Rescue Plan spending 
spree. Of course, the deficit will look lower this year without a 
massive $1.9 trillion piece of legislation financed entirely with 
deficit spending.
  And I am not getting my hopes up about future deficit drops, since 
many Democrats still want to use reconciliation rules to force through 
another big, party-line Democrat spending bill. This one is $5 
trillion. If they come up with a proposal that is anything like their 
original Build Back Better proposal, we will undoubtedly be looking at 
more deficit spending.
  One news outlet had this to say about President Biden's op-ed and his 
plan to reduce the deficit:

       Is it really a `plan' when the President points fingers? 
     While the president's op-ed purports to lay out a plan for 
     addressing inflation, a close read shows that he actually 
     seems to be pushing the burden off on others . . .

  That is a fair assessment. Unfortunately, it is pretty par for the 
course for President Biden. He is happy to take credit for positive 
economic numbers even when he had nothing to do with them, but when it 
comes to taking responsibility for a situation, he is frequently 
nowhere to be found.
  He won't acknowledge that his own economic proposal, the American 
Rescue Plan, helped create our inflation crisis in the first place. 
Indeed, he largely ignored the inflation crisis until it started to 
become absolutely necessary for him to address it, if he wanted to 
survive politically.
  And he has displayed a similar lack of ownership of crises on his 
watch. The actions he has taken to weaken border security and 
immigration enforcement have helped create an unprecedented immigration 
crisis on the southern border.
  But from the President's attitude you barely even know that there is 
a problem, much less one that he has a particular responsibility to 
address.
  His hostile attitude toward American energy production helped drive 
up gas prices and left families struggling--struggling--to fill their 
cars. Yet the President is ready to push off responsibility for 
conventional energy production to other nations, leaving our Nation 
less secure and even more vulnerable to price spikes.
  The President closes his op-ed by noting:

       The economic policy choices we make today will determine 
     whether a sustained recovery that benefits all Americans is 
     possible.

  Well, the President is right about that. Unfortunately, it is pretty 
clear that the economic policy choices that he is making are wrong.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Rosen). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. TESTER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.