[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 126 (Thursday, July 28, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3749-S3750]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Inflation

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, minutes ago, new data confirmed what 
a supermajority of Americans already knew: Democrats have plunged 
America into a recession. According to official statistics, the U.S. 
economy just shrank for the second consecutive quarter. Democrats 
inherited an economy that was primed for a historic comeback and 
promptly ran it straight into the ground.
  Of course, working families didn't need any experts or statistics to 
tell them today's Democratic Party is a walking, talking economic 
disaster. Democrats' failures are causing working families deep 
personal pain on a daily basis.
  Americans know Democrats can't be trusted. They know it every time 
they fill the gas tank, every time they check out at the supermarket, 
every time parents stay up late at the kitchen table trying to figure 
out which bills they can afford to pay this particular month.
  Because Democrats spent us into inflation, 90 million American 
households say they are having a hard time meeting expenses--90 million 
American households. The average household in this country is having to 
pay an extra $5,300 and climbing every year just to tread water. 
Democrats' inflation is stealing more than $5,000 from the average 
family per year, and like a supermajority of Americans already knew 
before this morning, it has now driven the country into a recession.
  A few years back, our colleague the senior Senator from West Virginia 
said: ``I don't think [that] during a time of recession, you mess with 
any of the taxes, or increase any taxes.'' But, alas, yesterday, 
Washington Democrats announced they plan to do exactly that. The 
Democrats who robbed American families once with inflation now want to 
rob the country a second time through a gigantic, gigantic job-killing 
tax hike.
  Apparently, our Democratic colleagues do not want to be responsible 
for just skyrocketing prices alone. They want Americans to be faced 
with skyrocketing prices and higher taxes and fewer jobs all at the 
same time.
  Democrats have outlined a giant package of huge, new job-killing tax 
hikes, Green New Deal craziness that will kill American energy, and 
prescription drug socialism that will leave us with fewer lifesaving 
medicines--a reckless taxing-and-spending spree that will delight the 
far left and hammer working families even harder.
  The Democrats are going all in on a multihundred-billion-dollar tax 
hike

[[Page S3750]]

on American jobs that experts called--listen to this--the single most 
economically damaging part of their entire BBB plan from last year. 
Years of research show the burden would be overwhelmingly passed down 
to workers. This one tax hike alone would kill tens of thousands of 
American jobs.
  Democrats aren't sticking it to the fat cats. They are sticking it to 
the same middle-class families they have already crushed with 
inflation.
  So Democrats want to respond to their inflation crisis by killing 
jobs. They also want to respond to the global energy crisis by 
attacking American natural gas. This reckless taxing-and-spending spree 
includes a massive, massive new tax on American natural gas, our 
country's single largest source of electricity.
  We all know that when you tax something, you get less of it, and 
Democrats want new taxes on American natural gas wells, new taxes on 
American pipelines, and new taxes on American LNG exporting--higher 
electricity bills in the summer, higher heating bills in the winter, 
less reliable energy for our country, and less American energy exported 
to our allies abroad; doubling down--literally, doubling down--on 
inflation.
  I have only scratched the surface of all the ways Democrats want to 
pick Americans' pockets. They want to pour new funding--listen to 
this--into IRS agents so Americans end up with more audits. IRS agents 
get new computers and smartphones so that American small businesses get 
more audits.
  Also, Democrats want to drain money out of medical innovation and 
leave terminally ill Americans with fewer real treatments and cures as 
a result. The experts say this Big Government money grab will literally 
cost Americans their lives.
  But, remember, Democrats say all of these historic tax hikes are 
their answer to the inflation they already created themselves.
  So do you hear that, America? Democrats' answer to hurting you once 
is to hurt you again. Democrats say the response to Democratic 
inflation is Democratic tax hikes.
  It wasn't enough that Democrats have already destroyed your family's 
purchasing power. Now they want to kill your job and tax your 
electricity as well.

  So the natural next question is, What do Democrats want to do with 
all that money? What spending spree do the Democrats want so badly that 
they will raise taxes in the midst of a recession?
  Ah, here is the answer: Green New Deal nonsense and goodies for rich 
coastal elites. They want these job-killing tax hikes so they can spend 
tens of billions of dollars on slush funds for ``green banks'' and 
``environmental justice.'' They want job-killing tax hikes so they can 
finance new handouts for wealthy households earning up to $300,000 a 
year to buy an $80,000 electric car. Let me say that again: tax hikes 
so they can finance new handouts for wealthy households earning up to 
$300,000 a year to buy an $80,000 electric car. They want to subsidize 
rich people buying electric cars that cost more--more--than the median 
American household earns in an entire year.
  They want to tax American natural gas. They want to tax your 
electricity so they can spend billions making solar and wind power look 
artificially ready for prime time when they are not yet--billions of 
dollars so Democrats can meddle in what kind of car you drive; what 
kind of stove, hot water heater, or clothes dryer you can afford; and 
how you are allowed to heat your house. This is the nonsense that 
Democrats are focused on--not helping you put gas in your car, not 
helping you afford your groceries.
  They want to use the middle-class economic crisis they themselves 
created as an excuse to raise your taxes and ram through their Green 
New Deal nonsense, all of this liberal waste with no proof--none--that 
any of it would lead to a meaningful reduction in global emissions, 
much less global temperatures.
  America has already been reducing our emissions considerably over the 
last 15 to 20 years. Countries like China have just kept on emitting 
more and more, totally washing out our reductions and then some. 
Democrats want to forcibly reengineer our entire economy out from under 
working Americans' feet while China keeps on emitting more and more.
  Democrats are seeing American families the worst inflation in 40 
years and raising them job-killing tax hikes and--and--a war on 
American electricity.
  Our colleagues across the aisle have already completely lost 
Americans' trust on the economy before this reckless taxing-and-
spending spree. Apparently, they now want to see how much farther they 
can fall.