[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 148 (Wednesday, September 14, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Page S4596]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Inflation

  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, yesterday, new data showed what Texans 
have known and felt for months: that inflation simply is not letting 
up. Last month, prices were up 8.3 percent from a year ago.
  Economist Larry Summers, a well-known former president of Harvard 
University and member of Presidential Cabinets, said that this CPI 
report, Consumer Price Index report, confirms that the United States 
has a serious inflation problem.
  Rent is up 6.7 percent. If you go to the grocery store to feed your 
family, groceries are 13.5 percent over what they were last year. If 
you are a senior citizen suffering through the hot Texas summer and 
need your air-conditioner to work overtime, electricity to make that 
air-conditioner run is up 16 percent. Of course, that is just since 
last August, just a year ago, when we were already battling runaway 
inflation.
  But here is an even more shocking figure: Since President Biden took 
office on January 20, 2021, prices have risen 13 percent. So 13 cents 
out of every dollar that you earn--poof--has gone away. You are that 
much poorer. Your standard of living has been decreased by 13 percent.
  Inflation, of course, far outpaces wage growth, meaning the average 
American has effectively been handed a pay cut. A single paycheck 
doesn't go nearly as far today as it did a year ago.
  This is exactly what was predicted by leading economists when our 
Democratic colleagues ran off with the taxpayer credit card at the end 
of last year. They abused the rules of the Senate to spend an 
additional $2 trillion in the name of COVID relief even though less 
than 10 percent of the money was directly related to the pandemic.
  I want to differentiate between what we did together on a bipartisan 
basis to deal with COVID when we spent nearly $5 trillion on a 
bipartisan basis. There is no doubt this was a grave emergency, a 
public health emergency, economic emergency. We did what we had to do, 
and we got through it. But even after that, our Democratic colleagues 
couldn't seem to kick the spending habits and unilaterally spent an 
extra $2 trillion. As I said, even though 10 percent of that money was 
related to the pandemic, 90 percent, then, was unrelated.
  Then the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which the President was 
celebrating yesterday when the stock market fell 1,200 points--this 
partisan bill amounts to another $240 billion in unnecessary spending, 
while raising taxes at the same time.
  As I said, our colleagues ironically call this bill the Inflation 
Reduction Act, and the White House chose yesterday--the day that the 
latest disappointing inflation figures were released--to celebrate its 
passage.
  Inflation Reduction Act is false advertising. The Penn Wharton 
economic review of the Inflation Reduction Act said there is no 
reduction of inflation for at least 2 full years, and, indeed, it may 
actually get worse. But we all knew this intuitively, that if you keep 
spending this much money, you are basically pouring gasoline on the 
inflation fire. It is going to get worse and worse and worse, and 
middle-class working families all across this country have gotten hurt 
as a result.
  Since our Democratic colleagues took control of both Houses of 
Congress and the White House, Texans' lives have gotten harder, not 
easier. Inflation I have spoken to has skyrocketed, real wages have 
fallen, and our economy has fallen into a recession.
  Now, this is one of the other curious things about defining terms. 
Our Democratic colleagues want to argue about whether two consecutive 
quarters of negative GDP are actually a recession or not. Well, they 
were when Republicans were in charge, but apparently when Democrats are 
in charge, that definition doesn't apply.
  Much as they tried but failed to convince the American people that 
the Inflation Reduction Act would actually reduce inflation, it didn't, 
and it won't anytime soon.
  Well, we know that the response to inflation by the Federal Reserve 
has been to raise interest rates, and they are projected to raise them 
at least three-quarters of 1 percent or 75 basis points, which will 
also slow down the economy and hurt job creation. So it looks like even 
more pain is coming.