[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 98 (Wednesday, June 8, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2855-S2857]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Inflation

  Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today to talk 
about another Biden crisis. We just had my friend and colleague from 
Oklahoma talk about the crisis, as he saw it, at the southern border 
while he was on his trip there very recently. We hear from other 
colleagues about the crisis of crime in our cities across the country 
as another failure of this administration's. I come today to talk about 
the Biden economic crisis, which is hitting families in all of our 
States, in all of our communities, and it is the thing that I heard the 
very most about when I was home in Wyoming last week.
  Across the country, summer is almost here. It is time for barbecues, 
visiting friends, and family vacations for many. This year, there will 
be many fewer who will be able to afford what has been a natural part 
of their family lives.
  The American people have just been through the most expensive 
Memorial Day ever, and it has been painfully expensive for families 
across this country. This is just a preview of the summer of stress 
that families are going to be facing all across America. Hamburger meat 
today is at its highest price ever; chicken, its highest price ever; a 
gallon of gasoline, its highest price ever.
  They say inflation is up by a certain percentage, but gas prices have 
doubled since Joe Biden became President. There has been a 100-percent 
increase in gas prices since the Democrats became the majority in the 
Senate and Joe Biden was sworn into office. Gas prices in America, 
under the Democrats, have gone up 15 out of 16 months since Joe Biden 
came to the White House and Chuck Schumer came to be majority leader. 
Gas now costs more than $4 a gallon on average in every State of the 
Union, and we are approaching $5 on average across the country. In the 
liberal paradise of California, the gas price today is over $6 a gallon 
if you can find it at that price. Financial analysts who have looked at

[[Page S2856]]

this thing recently predicted that the average price of a gallon of 
gasoline nationwide could be $6.20 all across the country this summer.
  So what do the President of the United States and the Democrats in 
this body have to do about that? What is the solution? Because people 
are looking for solutions.
  The Democrats say: We run the place. We are the House. We are the 
Senate. We are the White House. We run the place.
  Well, where are your solutions? I would say to those Democrats.
  Oh, Joe Biden has a solution: I think I will go and beg for oil from 
Saudi Arabia. I think I will go and beg for oil from Saudi Arabia.
  The Democratic policy on energy seems to be ``anything but American 
energy.'' The Biden administration has already been begging Venezuela, 
Iran, the OPEC cartel, and even Vladimir Putin to sell us more oil. We 
have seen that all in the last year. If North Korea had oil, I am sure 
the Democrats would go and try to beg them as well. This President 
would rather beg the Saudis to sell us energy than to let hard-working 
American energy workers get it out of the ground here at home.
  Now, we don't need to go to Saudi Arabia. We don't need to go to 
Iran. We don't need to go to Venezuela. We don't need to go to OPEC. We 
don't need to go to Russia. We have it here at home in America, and we 
have an abundance of energy. Joe Biden is transferring the wealth of 
our Nation to the Middle East. Why? Because that is a decision by Joe 
Biden and the Democrats--to send our wealth to the Middle East rather 
than to use the wealth that we have here in America.
  Joe Biden has blocked off the vast majority of Federal lands from 
energy exploration and production. Even on the remaining Federal land, 
Joe Biden continues to cancel major oil and gas lease sales. Just last 
week, while Members were home, the Biden administration, with none of 
us in Washington but all of us at home, said they are going to redo the 
environmental reviews of leases made by the previous administration. 
Now, this includes 2,000 leases in my home State of Wyoming. For every 
existing energy lease, Joe Biden has done what he can to stop 
production there. He has put 4,300 drilling permits in limbo.
  What does he say about this? He said it in Japan. He said: We are 
going through an incredible transition.
  This is Joe Biden, the President of the United States.
  He said: God willing, when this is over, this incredible transition 
we are going through, we will be stronger and less reliant on fossil 
fuels.
  What Joe Biden is saying to every American is, tough luck. Take your 
medicine. Take your medicine, and pay the price because we are going 
through an incredible transition, and God willing, when it is over, we 
are going to be stronger.
  The real transition that is happening today is that we are going from 
being a nation of energy dominance to being an energy-dependent nation. 
We are going from prosperity to poverty and from wealth to weakness. 
That is what we are getting from the Democrats in Congress, the 
Democrats in the Senate, the Democrats in the House, and Joe Biden.
  Today, we are still producing 1 million barrels of oil fewer than we 
were before the pandemic. So what do Democrats want to do? Once again, 
the Secretary of the Treasury was with us yesterday. They want to raise 
taxes on the American public and on American energy. Well, what do you 
think higher taxes on energy production are going to do when oil is 
already at a point at which people are paying $5 a gallon for gasoline?
  For Democrats who choose to go home and listen to the people at home, 
I would imagine they are getting an earful from the people at home.
  One Democratic Member of the Senate was on TV yesterday, bragging in 
a hearing. I saw it played a number of times. She didn't care how high 
energy prices went. She didn't care at all because she had an electric 
car and drove it here, from her home to Washington, DC, so it didn't 
matter. Oh, if you can't afford to have $55,000 to buy an electric 
vehicle, too bad for you. That is the Democrats' response. That is what 
we are seeing in this country which Joe Biden has led into crisis after 
crisis after crisis.

  High energy prices, of course, mean higher prices for almost 
everything else. Higher energy prices are already driving up food 
costs. For any Senator who went to a grocery store--and I am not sure 
how many Democrats do the shopping for themselves or how many Democrats 
saw how high food prices are, but I certainly saw it in Wyoming this 
past weekend--food prices are rising at the fastest rate in 40 years. 
Does a single Democratic Senator make reference to that? talk about it? 
come up with or try to find solutions for it? Will we have a solution? 
Joe Biden can't blame Vladimir Putin for high food prices. The price of 
food has gone up every single month--every single month--since Joe 
Biden came into office. High energy prices. High food prices.
  There is a 40-year high of inflation in this country today, so 
inflation has driven the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. What 
does that mean? Well, for the seniors and retirees who are watching 
their savings and their retirements melt away, it means a lot. Interest 
rates have gone up, and mortgage applications have dropped. Many 
Americans are giving up on their dreams of even owning their own homes.
  Young mothers can't buy or find infant baby formula to buy. Joe Biden 
didn't see it coming. People saw it coming, and mothers saw it coming, 
but it was ignored by the administration. Once again, they dropped the 
ball, and the President was caught by surprise. Seven out of every ten 
stores in America have run out of baby formula. There have already been 
cases of children being hospitalized because they can't get the right 
kind of formula. What did the Biden administration finally say? They 
admitted they knew about the crisis last year; yet they did nothing.
  Month after month after month, this administration did nothing. That 
is kind of what we have gotten with this President. The President is 
too slow--too slow to react, to slow to act, and too slow to respond to 
the needs of the American people. No wonder they are nicknaming him 
``Too Slow Joe.'' That is what we have in the White House today. It is 
a disgrace. The country deserves better. Americans of every background 
and in every stage of life are being punished by the bad policies of 
Joe Biden's and the Democrats' in Congress.
  For most Americans, this is the worst economy they have ever seen. 
More and more Americans are having to borrow money just to pay the 
bills to try to keep up. Household debt is near an alltime high, and 
credit card day is near an alltime high. The average car in the United 
States is now 12 years old. This is a record high.
  I would have to say to my colleague who bragged about having an 
electric car and driving it here and not caring about the fact that gas 
prices have gone up and was actually laughing about it, it seemed to 
me, well, you are different than most Americans, I would have to say, 
because most Americans can't do what you do. They don't have that 
opportunity. The average car in the United States is 12 years old 
because that is what people can afford, but they can hardly afford the 
gas to go in it. They can't afford to buy a new car or a used car, let 
alone an electric car.
  Since Joe Biden became President, prices have gone up faster than 
wages. That is the complaint I continue to hear about at home. Month 
after month after month, the buying power of the average American 
family keeps going lower and lower and lower. Now two-thirds of the 
American people are talking about living paycheck to paycheck with 
nothing left over--nothing. As a result, the American people are 
feeling stuck and stressed and squeezed.
  The pessimism of the economists is only exceeded by the pessimism of 
the American people about the Joe Biden economy. All told, Joe Biden's 
economic crisis has become a perfect storm of bad economic news.
  Jamie Dimon is the CEO of JPMorgan Chase. He warned of an upcoming 
economic hurricane. The economic hurricane is a perfect storm of record 
inflation, record debt, a shortage of necessities, higher interest 
rates, vanishing savings, and a shrinking economy. The Biden inflation 
crisis

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is quickly spiraling into an all-around economic crisis. If the 
Democrats continue on this path, it is going to get a lot worse soon.
  Inflation for producers is even higher than inflation for consumers. 
In fact, inflation for producers has been the highest on record. 
Wholesale prices for producers went up 11 percent in the last year. 
That means higher prices for the people who grow our food, who build 
our buildings, and who keep the lights on. Inflation for producers 
today means inflation for consumers tomorrow.
  After 13 months of this inflation crisis--a crisis that the 
administration kept ignoring, kept denying, kept refusing to admit was 
here, kept saying wasn't coming--the Secretary of the Treasury said: 
Well, if it comes, and there is a small chance it comes, it will be 
manageable.
  There is no light at the end of the tunnel. If there is any light at 
the end of the tunnel, it is because the freight train marked 
``recession'' is about to hit America. Inflation is so bad that the 
Democrats can't even deny it anymore. So they create it; they ignore 
it; they deny it; they blame inflation on everybody else.
  Yesterday, in the Finance Committee, the Secretary of the Treasury 
said: No, no. It wasn't them.
  The Democrats denied it. They said: No, no. It was Putin. It was the 
pandemic.
  But now the Democrats want to make it worse.
  Well, it took about 14 months, but Janet Yellen admitted earlier this 
week in a CNN interview that she had been wrong about inflation. When 
she said there was a slight risk, she was mistaken. When she said it 
was manageable, she was mistaken.
  She said: Now, I was wrong about the path inflation would take. This 
is the Secretary of the Treasury for Joe Biden, his handpicked person 
to run the economy. She also admitted that inflation was a matter of 
supply and demand and that the spending in the American Rescue Plan did 
feed the demand. I think she is talking about the $2 trillion that 
every Democrat voted for and that every Republican voted against; the 
$2 trillion to which even the Democratic economists said: Don't do 
that. It is going to make us have bad inflation. And we had bad 
inflation. But Joe Biden and the Secretary of the Treasury and every 
Democrat in the House and Senate voted in favor of pouring fuel on the 
fire that turned into the inflation we are facing today.

  This was an enormous mistake on the part of the Democrats and the 
President--Chuck Schumer and every Democrat in this Senate, all the 
Democrats in the House and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It is costing the 
average American family today $5,000 more this year than last year just 
to stay even--not to get ahead, just to stay even.
  Democrats were warned. They were warned by Republicans. They were 
warned by their own experts, and they ignored it; simply, flatly 
ignored the warnings, passed the largest spending bill in American 
history. And ever since that day, inflation has spiraled out of 
control. More than a year later, Democrats still don't have anything to 
offer beyond blame and excuses.
  Last week, the Secretary of Commerce was asked:

       Is there one specific category [of high prices] where you 
     think you can actually make a difference?

  This is her answer. She said:

       I wish.

  That is what Democrats are left with: wishes, wishes--no plan to fix 
the crisis that they have created.
  Joe Biden's so-called energy inflation plan made so many false 
promises. And he talked about this. He wrote an editorial in the Wall 
Street Journal. You would think that maybe somebody at the White House 
who wrote it would have been vetted before they gave it to the 
President, before he put his name on it. It got Four Pinocchios from 
the Washington Post which talked about what the President had to say 
about energy as just being a lie.
  We know what we need to do. We need to stop the reckless spending. We 
need to unleash American energy. Instead of canceling lease sales, Joe 
Biden needs to open up Federal lands to American energy production 
instead. Instead of canceling pipelines, Joe Biden should speed up the 
pipeline permitting process. Instead of begging other countries to sell 
us oil, we should get it out of the ground right here in America.
  Oh, we have the American energy skills and skilled workers to see us 
through this crisis. The President just needs to let them go to work.
  Working families have already been pushed to the breaking point. 
People are spending their savings, seeing it melting away. They have 
run up credit cards just to get by, and now recession is heading toward 
us. We need to change course. The administration needs to change course 
because the Joe Biden economic hurricane is about to hit America.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.