[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 98 (Wednesday, June 8, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2844-S2845]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Inflation

  Mr. President, on a completely different matter, rising food prices 
have been one of the most relentless and painful aspects of the 
historic inflation unfolding on Democrats' watch.
  One year ago, President Biden's White House bragged--bragged--that 
the cost of an Independence Day cookout would be 16-cents cheaper than 
the year before. Well, in the past year food prices have jumped more 
than 9 percent. So that same spread won't be cents cheaper, it will be 
dollars more expensive.
  Grocery store prices have risen at their fastest rate since 1980, and 
at full-service restaurants, prices have jumped more in the past 12 
months than any year on record. Any year on record. There has been 17 
straight months of rising food prices.
  So this is not a ``Putin'' price hike. As one of my constituents in 
Nancy, KY, put it a few months back, ``Many people are scared that they 
might have to choose between eating and heating the house.''
  Democrats' failed policies have made it harder to feed a family in 
America, but the pain isn't limited to the supermarket or to the dinner 
table, it includes producers at every step of the supply chain.
  According to the owner of Jot `Em Down Store, which boasts the oldest 
lunch counter in Lexington, rising costs have come from all directions. 
``This year, we've been hampered by supply chain issues, rising gas 
prices [and] inflation . . .''
  In my hometown of Louisville, the operator of one stand at the local 
farmers market elaborated, ``The feed to feed animals has gone up. 
Packaging, processing has gone up. . . . Butter has gone up three times 
in the last 4 weeks.'' Our food producers are feeling the pinch.
  A soybean farmer in Muhlenberg County put it this way: ``I can put 
out two, maybe three crops in years past for what it's costing this 
year.''
  A corn grower in Christian County says rising prices are ``crippling 
family farms like mine.''
  Of course, Kentucky farmers are not alone. Across America, farm 
country has been absolutely hammered on Democrats' watch. And by the 
Biden administration's own data, farm production expenses from animal 
feed to diesel fuel are climbing even higher this year than last year.

[[Page S2845]]

  It is a really hard time to be in the business of feeding America. 
But it didn't have to be this way. It didn't have to be this way. 
Washington Democrats didn't have to ram through a multitrillion-dollar 
wish list of inflationary spending last spring. The Biden 
administration didn't have to declare war on affordable American energy 
on day one.

  Needless to say, millions of working American families sit down for 
dinner these days wondering why on Earth they did.