[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 118 (Monday, July 18, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H6684-H6685]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1215
                            INFLATION DENIAL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. LaMalfa) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LaMALFA. Madam Speaker, President Biden has allowed the American 
people and Main Street businesses to suffer while his reckless spending 
policies continue to make things even worse.
  With this crisis weighing heavy on us all, the President and Senate 
Democrats are pushing to add a trillion dollars in higher taxes on Main 
Street small businesses. That will only lead to more higher prices, 
wage cuts, and supply shortages, exacerbating the inflation problem 
significantly.
  Instead of working to address America's inflation crisis, House 
Democrats will spend this week pushing for trillions more in government 
spending, which will only worsen America's inflation crisis further.
  Instead of addressing the economic crisis, Democrats are prioritizing 
liberal initiatives and increasing Federal spending with some accounts 
receiving double-digit and triple-digit percentage increases.
  Some of these out-of-touch woke spending priorities include taxpayer-
funded abortion. Funding for FDA--the same agency that failed to 
prevent the infant formula crisis--has increased 10 percent. And 
partisan climate change initiatives, even though the American people 
are facing the highest gas prices on record.
  The American people don't need any of these far-left priorities.
  They need a responsible spending plan.
  They need the Biden administration to unleash American energy 
independence and domestic production.
  They need the Republicans to stop the Biden administration's radical 
policies from driving our Nation straight into another recession.

[[Page H6685]]

  President Biden's denial of inflation that his policies have created 
are leading the Nation straight into said recession.
  Last week, June's Consumer Price Index score came out and revealed 
that inflation has soared 9.1 percent. That is right, the largest 12-
month increase in over four decades. I kind of believe 9.1 percent 
might be a lowball number when it gets right down to kitchen-table 
issues that regular, everyday Americans have to deal with. So even 
though inflation is up by 9.1 percent, the American people are paying 
far more for just about everything, such as gas, approximately 44 
percent; airline tickets, 33 percent; used cars, 23 percent; hotels, 23 
percent; suits, 22 percent; bacon, 18 percent; oranges, 17 percent; 
tires, 16 percent; furniture, 15 percent; milk, 15 percent; coffee, 14 
percent; deliveries, 14 percent; bread, 14 percent; baby food--if you 
can find it--13 percent; soup, 13 percent; cereal, 12 percent; eggs, 10 
percent; dry cleaning, 10 percent; then the rents on their homes and 
apartments and such, averaging about 30 percent.
  And we saw that a little over a year and a half ago, lumber had gone 
up quadruple. It is coming back, but it is still double of 2 years ago 
for lumber in order to build homes and build anything else.
  So where are we at? These outrageous prices are crushing the American 
Dream.
  Last July, the President claimed that inflation was only transitory; 
that if we continued down this administration's path, then prices would 
go down again.
  Certainly. Right.
  Obviously, that was false.
  Now it is the blame game: Putin. The war in Ukraine. Gas stations. Or 
Republicans. We are not the ones doing the big spending.
  Inflation is indeed a tax on all Americans. It is caused by Biden and 
the House Democrats' out-of-control spending--trillions without 
accountability.
  Small businesses can't afford the increase of input costs across the 
board. Farmers' fertilizer and all the other things that you would use 
to grow something, build something, manufacture something, are driven 
at their core by high energy costs. That is at the base of everything, 
energy costs.
  So workers are effectively--because of all these costs--really seeing 
their wages cut. Even though they have seen some increases on paper, 
the higher costs of doing everything is hurting low- and middle-income 
Americans badly.
  What I hear coming out of Sacramento and out of the White House 
doesn't seem to be helping. It seems to be more focused on a handful of 
agenda items. The religion of climate change--which, by the way, I will 
remind you again, carbon dioxide is only 0.04 percent of our 
atmosphere.
  So we have to get back to business and rely on Americans to do 
business and produce things domestically. Let's not import all this 
stuff from China. We don't need their stuff. We can make it here. We 
can make it efficiently. We can make it more ecologically sound 
with our energy than it can be done anywhere else in the world.

  Madam Speaker, let's put Americans back to work and let's get the 
government off their backs and out of their wallets.

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