[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 149 (Thursday, September 15, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4628-S4629]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Inflation

  Mr. McCONNELL. This week's inflation report confirmed what working 
people across this country know all too well: The costs of feeding a 
family and keeping the lights on have skyrocketed more quickly this 
past year than at any time since the wake of the Carter administration.
  A year and a half of crippling runaway inflation is the most 
important story to the American people every single day. The media have 
grown somewhat numb to month after month of 8 and 9 percent inflation, 
but working Americans have not had the luxury of growing numb. The pain 
gets worse every single time they have to fill a shopping cart or pay 
their credit card bill.
  One mother of young sons in my hometown of Louisville put it this 
way:

       My grocery bill has [gone] up a lot. It's terrible right 
     now. I have to be really strategic on how I plan out the 
     whole month to make sure we have enough money.

  Of course, Kentuckians aren't the only ones in this predicament. In 
Nevada, an office worker recently told reporters:

       I've not been buying a lot of things because I can't afford 
     it. I'm like, ``The kids don't need juice for school anymore. 
     We'll just do water.''

  In Arizona, so many families are having to make tough choices at the 
grocery store, many are accepting charity to keep food on the table.
  According to an employee of one food bank in Phoenix:

       The impact we are seeing day in and day out continues to go 
     up. The families are stressed.

  And who can blame them? Food inflation in America is at more than a 
four-decade high. Bread is 16.2 percent more expensive than it was a 
year ago. Milk is up 17 percent. Flour is up 23.3 percent, and eggs are 
going for nearly 40 percent more.
  Week after week, feeding a family has become a stressful proposition 
for millions of Americans, and every extra dollar spent on groceries is 
one fewer to spare for soaring electricity bills.
  In the suburbs of Las Vegas, residents have commiserated over the 
astronomical cost of keeping their homes cool in the summer. One 
neighborhood message board reads like this:

       My bill for this month will be $574 . . . it's insane.
       Yes, ours was $800 for June.

  In Arizona, a restaurant worker didn't mince words about scraping 
together enough to keep the lights and air-conditioning on:

       If I didn't have roommates, I wouldn't be able to make it 
     on the salary that I have.

  Overall, inflation in Phoenix and Atlanta is way, way higher than 
even the sky-high national average. The country as a whole is still 
grappling with inflation over 8 percent, but Phoenix has seen a 
staggering 13 percent inflation in just the last year, and Atlanta has 
seen nearly 12 percent.
  Of course, for working Americans in some other States, the most acute 
emergency is not the cost of summer cooling but, rather, the cost of 
winter heating.
  In places like New Hampshire and Vermont where many homes burn 
heating oil, this important price is up more than 91 percent since 
President Biden took office.
  And in every corner of the country, one of the biggest collective 
headaches facing working families with young kids is the rising cost of 
back-to-school shopping lists.
  According to one working mother in Pennsylvania, she had to take 
items like a backpack for her preschooler out of her shopping cart in 
the checkout line:

       It's been at least 20 years since I have had to pull back 
     to this extent. This is a new and humbling experience for me 
     as an adult.

  American families are facing math problems that just don't add up.
  Meanwhile, the same Washington Democrats who got them into this mess 
spent Tuesday celebrating having rammed through, on a party-line vote, 
a bill that does nothing to help them solve it: hundreds of billions of 
dollars in new spending, just as working families are having the 
hardest time in decades making ends meet at home; hundreds of billions 
of taxpayer dollars that wouldn't even accomplish Democrats' own 
underlying radical climate goals, let alone the false claims of 
``inflation reduction'' on the cover.
  So our economy continues to hand working families a raw deal. But the 
same day this latest awful inflation report was published, Washington 
Democrats went to a concert at the White House and celebrated--
celebrated--their economic policies.
  How much more out of touch can you get?
  The Democrats' giant inflationary spiral is costing the average 
American household 460 extra dollars every single month just to buy the 
same things they bought last year. President Biden and his government 
have imposed a silent Democratic inflation tax of $460 every single 
month.
  In Kentucky, the average household has to pay $608 more a month--well 
over $7,000 more a year--just to stay where they were when President 
Biden was sworn in.
  Americans' real wages--their purchasing power--has plummeted since 
this all-Democratic government was sworn in.
  And the Democrats response? Print and spend hundreds of billions 
more, make Americans without bachelor's degrees pay off the graduate 
school debt of doctors and lawyers, and throw themselves a party on the 
White House lawn.
  Our colleagues across the aisle created this human catastrophe. This 
runaway inflation was a policy choice by Democrats, and they aren't 
even trying to stop it.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                    Inflation Reduction Act of 2022

  Mr. THUNE. Madam President, the August inflation numbers came out

[[Page S4629]]

this week, and they weren't good. Inflation was even higher than 
expected. It was very clear that soaring prices are likely to continue 
for quite a while, but as usual, it doesn't seem to concern the 
Democrats one bit.
  The President was asked Tuesday if he was concerned about August's 
even-worse-than-expected inflation report.
  His answer? ``No, I'm not.''
  It was just one more tone-deaf moment for the President and the 
Democrats.
  On Tuesday, the President and the Democrats gathered at the White 
House to congratulate themselves for having passed their so-called 
Inflation Reduction Act, a bill that will do nothing--nothing--to 
reduce inflation. That is not just my opinion. That was the conclusion 
of the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model and of the Democrat 
chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, who referred to the bill as 
the ``so-called Inflation Reduction Act'' on the Senate floor while 
admitting it would do nothing to solve our Nation's inflation crisis.
  But that didn't stop the Democrats from celebrating yesterday. For 
most of us, of course, it is difficult to understand what there was to 
celebrate. Leaving aside the issue of the 40-year-high inflation, we 
already know that the bill will also fall short in another respect--on 
deficit reduction.
  The Democrats' claims that the bill would provide meaningful deficit 
reduction were always somewhat dubious, but even granting the 
Democrats' rosiest assumptions, President Biden wiped out any deficit 
reduction when he announced his massive student loan giveaway 8 days--8 
days--after the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law.
  So no inflation reduction, no deficit reduction. Oh, one other thing: 
The Inflation Reduction Act will drive up energy bills for Americans.
  So the question is: What was there to celebrate?
  Well, for the Democrats, the Inflation Reduction Act marked a chance 
to finally push through some of their far-left, Green New Deal 
fantasies, things like electric vehicle tax credits to help wealthy 
Americans buy electric cars, more than $60 billion--$60 billion--for 
``environmental justice priorities,'' including $1.9 billion for things 
like identifying gaps in tree canopy coverage, and the list goes on. So 
I think the Democrats are pretty satisfied with themselves over finally 
jamming through elements of their Green New Deal agenda.
  Then, of course, they succeeded in extending increased ObamaCare 
subsidies that will push Americans off of private healthcare plans and 
into government-run care.
  Then--then--there are the tax hikes. The current Democratic leader 
once said, ``You don't want to take money out of the economy when the 
economy is shrinking,'' like it has in the previous two quarters. But 
those days are gone. For the Democrats, raising taxes has become an 
article of faith.
  And it goes far beyond raising money to help pay for their Big 
Government spending. The Democrats believe raising taxes on 
corporations and well-off Americans is good in and of itself, even if 
those tax hikes have a negative effect on less well-off Americans and 
the economy. The tax hikes that the Democrats have included in their 
so-called Inflation Reduction Act will, indeed, have a negative effect 
on our economy and on the hard-working Americans who help support it. 
The Democrats' tax hikes on businesses will result in slower growth, 
lower wages, and thousands of fewer jobs, and the Democrats' tax hikes 
on conventional energy will result in higher energy prices for working 
families.
  In addition to raising taxes, the other main way the Inflation 
Reduction Act raises revenue is by increasing IRS audits and placing 
new burdens on taxpayers.
  The Democrats' bill contains a whopping $80 billion in increased 
funding for the IRS. That is an increase in funding which represents 
six times the annual budget of the IRS today. More than half of those 
funds, or $46 billion, are earmarked for increased IRS enforcement. 
Just 4 percent is for improving customer service, which should tell you 
all you need to know about where the Democrats' real priorities lie.
  The bill would provide for the hiring of as many as 87,000 new 
employees, which would more than double the current size of the Agency 
and make the IRS--make the IRS, if you can believe this--larger than 
Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Coast Guard put together, 
combined.
  In the lead-up to the passage of the Democrats' bill, the Biden 
administration put out a statement declaring that the money for IRS 
enforcement would not go to the increased audits of households making 
less than $400,000. Because we had reason to doubt that that would be 
the case, the Republicans put forward an amendment to the bill to 
prevent the IRS from using its new money to audit those Americans. 
Every Democrat--every single Democrat--voted against the amendment. So, 
I guess, the Democrats are happy to oppose more IRS audits of middle-
class Americans in theory, but they don't want to cut off the 
possibility of those audits in practice if they end up needing them to 
help fund their Green New Deal spending.
  I don't need to tell anyone that the IRS is notorious for mishandling 
sensitive taxpayer data. As recently as this month, we learned that the 
IRS had inadvertently posted confidential taxpayer data of around 
120,000 individuals on its website--private taxpayer information that 
was available to the general public.
  Then, of course, there was last year's leak, or hack, of confidential 
taxpayer information that was shared with the left-leaning ProPublica 
and was used to advance a partisan agenda for which, I might add, 
neither the IRS nor the Biden administration has provided any 
accountability.
  Then there was the infamous targeting of conservative groups for 
extra scrutiny under the Obama IRS, and the list goes on.
  I haven't even discussed the IRS's record of grossly 
underperforming--some would say nonexistent--customer service. During 
the 2022 tax season, just 10 percent of taxpayers' calls--10 percent of 
taxpayers' calls--to the IRS were answered by an IRS employee. What we 
need to be doing is holding the IRS accountable, not setting tens of 
thousands of new IRS agents loose on taxpayers' accounts.
  Earlier this week, I joined my Republican colleagues on the Senate 
Finance Committee to introduce legislation to prevent the IRS from 
using its new funding to audit American workers or small business 
owners earning less than $400,000 per year.
  I also introduced a bill this week, along with Senator Collins, to 
improve taxpayer service at the IRS. Our legislation, called the 
Increase Reliable Services Now Act, would prevent the IRS from hiring 
new employees for enforcement until customer service at the IRS had 
reached a more acceptable level. It is unacceptable--unacceptable--that 
taxpayers have a 1 in 10 chance of receiving assistance when calling 
the IRS, and the Agency should not be allowed to increase enforcement 
hires until it has achieved at least a basic level of customer service.
  So we have 87,000 new employees, which is double--double--the size of 
the current IRS workforce, and we have $80 billion, which is six times 
the current annual budget of the IRS, with a specific focus: going 
after taxpayers in this country to try and get, raise--whatever--more 
revenue to fund the Democrats' Big Government fantasies. At the same 
time, 1 in 10 taxpayers is getting his calls returned at the IRS.
  I will continue to work to increase IRS accountability and prevent 
hard-working Americans from being squeezed to fund Democrats' Green New 
Deal spending.
  Like the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan spending spree that came 
before it--which, I would add, helped plunge our country into our 
current inflation crisis--the Inflation Reduction Act is a bad deal for 
the American people, and all of the self-congratulatory White House 
parties in the world aren't going to change that basic fundamental 
fact.
  Americans are experiencing serious economic hardship, and Democrats 
are doing nothing to help.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Markey). The Senator from Iowa.