[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 149 (Thursday, September 15, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4806-S4808]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
INFLATION
Mr. SASSE. Madam President, first, I would like to associate myself
with the comments of the Senator from Oklahoma and thank him for all of
the work he has done on this.
The Abraham Accords are really something to celebrate, something that
we should be building on. And there is not a lot of good news right now
on a whole bunch of scores, and this is worth celebrating. So
commendations on your resolution.
Something we shouldn't be celebrating is inflation, and I wasn't
invited, but it looks like there was one heck of a party this week at
the White House.
In case folks missed it, President Biden, Majority Leader Schumer,
Speaker Pelosi, and others gathered on the south lawn of the White
House on Tuesday afternoon to clink champagne glasses and celebrate the
so-called Inflation Reduction Act, passed along straight party lines
last month. James Taylor even flew in for the festivities.
But at the same time that Washington politicians were patting
themselves on the back, here is actual reality--not Orwellian rhetoric,
not sort of made-up names for legislation to spend hundreds and
hundreds of billions of dollars--here is actual reality: Americans are
getting slapped in the face with yet another month of bad news. Core
inflation grew another six-tenths of a percent just in the month of
August, defying even the most pessimistic estimations and analyses
heading into those reporting numbers.
Both the Dow and the S&P had their worst day since the very arrival
of COVID.
Consumer prices are now up 8.3 percent for the year, but it is worse
than that for median-income households in America. Grocery prices are
13 percent more expensive this middle of September than they were the
last middle of September.
How do you think about what 13 percent inflation looks like? Here is
the way I explained it to my kids: You know, if a year ago today, you
went to the grocery store checkout line and you had $100 in your pocket
and you had a cart full of groceries and you paid your $100 for the
$100 of groceries, if you showed up today at the checkout line at the
grocery store with the exact same cart and the exact same hundred
bucks, you would then have to awkwardly and in an embarrassed way, in
front of the people behind you in line, say: I have to figure out how
to take $13 of stuff off this checkout line because the $100 that I had
last year that bought $100 of food only buys $87 of food right now.
That is what 13 percent inflation means.
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Even CNN had to admit that the White House's timing was awkward,
calling the event ``a bizarre split-screen moment,'' with President
Biden taking a victory lap with a so-called Inflation Reduction Act
while in the real world, inflation was tanking markets. That was
actually what was happening on Tuesday. On air, the CNN anchor
suggested it ``feels a little hard to be celebratory.'' That is a kind
of awkward, timid way to tell the truth.
Lots of Americans have become used to this split-screen reality where
Washington says one thing, but reality is completely different. It
often feels like officials in Washington are living alternate realities
and then trying to convince the American people: You don't know what
you are talking about. What you are actually experiencing at the
checkout line when you had to put back $13 of groceries--it is not
really true. The great news is, we have wine glasses in our hands;
let's clink them together.
Washington, DC, is obviously in a bubble--and not for the first time.
The same folks who threw that party are the types who order lots of
their food from DoorDash and therefore might actually not know what the
price of eggs, milk, and meat is. They are the kind of folks who see
inflation as something that happens on paper, but seeing it on paper is
different than feeling it.
DC sees many problems on paper but doesn't really connect with what
the American people are living. DC saw the housing crisis of 2008, 2009
as something on paper, not as reality. Why? Well, because five of the
seven richest counties in America are the five suburban counties of
Northern Virginia and Maryland that ring Washington, DC. Think about
that. Of 3,000 counties in America, 5 of the 7 richest ones are the
places that surround the city.
So in 2008, 2009, when housing was collapsing everywhere, when lots
of people were going bankrupt in the country, people in this city said:
I don't know what the heck you are talking about. We have massive
demand. Houses sell with escalation clauses.
There are way more buyers than there are sellers, so housing prices
in Washington, DC, in Northern Virginia, and in suburban Maryland went
up even as the country was living that collapse.
Opioids are a crisis that a lot of people in Washington, DC, know
only on paper because they don't see it around the yuppified
neighborhoods of Washington, DC.
Inflation is now that kind of crisis. It is a very real thing, and
yet people in this city host white wine parties to talk about how great
it is passing legislation that spent hundreds of billions of dollars
more, accelerating inflation, and they decided they would name it the
``Inflation Reduction Act.''
Let's review a little bit of history about what we have learned about
inflation over the last 15 months.
More than a year ago, last summer, when Americans were already
feeling their prices creep higher, the President dismissed long-term
worries about inflation with this quote:
There's nobody suggesting there's any unchecked inflation
on the way--no serious economist.
What?
That was an incredibly bizarre, dishonest statement, and everyone
knew. When it was spoken and when speechwriters wrote it, they knew
that that wasn't true.
Why did they know? Well, because inflation had gone from 1.4 to 5.5
percent in the 3 months before that statement was uttered.
Larry Summers, a longtime Democratic economist across multiple
administrations and who is well respected by folks in academia and in
government and in both parties, was screaming at the White House not
just in private but in public that this was nonsense, that they were
delusional about what was happening with inflation numbers. Yet our
President said that there was nobody suggesting that unchecked
inflation was on the way--no serious economist.
Here is what was actually happening in White House meeting rooms at
that time. Half of the Obama economic team was coming in and telling
the Biden economic team: Hey, you guys are going to get caught with
your pants down. That isn't true. That spin isn't reality. Inflation is
big, it is bad, and it is growing.
Yet the speechwriters said: Let's have the President go out to the
podium and say there is no serious economist who believes inflation is
coming.
That was in July of 2021.
In February of this year, when inflation had hit 7.8 percent, our
President predicted that ``inflation ought to be able to start to taper
off as we go through this year.'' He had predicted in December that
inflation had already peaked. Every one of these comments was detached
from reality, and the people writing the speeches knew they were
detached from reality.
The President is obviously not the only offender. Last October, with
high prices already eating away at families' savings accounts, White
House Chief of Staff Ron Klain applauded a tweet describing inflation
and supply chain snarls as ``high-class problems.'' That is some white
wine-drunk commentary for you. This is a middle-class American problem
that families in all 50 States are suffering.
A week later, the White House Press Secretary shrugged off the same
problem when asked about inflation as being ``the tragedy of the
treadmill that's delayed.'' ``The tragedy of the treadmill that's
delayed''--ouch.
Do these people know anyone in America who has ever had to put stuff
back at the checkout line at the grocery store? Because that is what I
have experienced and see at Walmart and Hy-Vee right now in Fremont,
NE.
Have they ever sat down with people to compare their receipts week
over week or month over month--those people who are looking at their
receipts, knowing that they have to put stuff back? They are not wrong,
and they are not talking about a 3-month delay on a Peloton delivery.
Just 2 months later, another White House Press Secretary declared
that the United States is ``stronger economically than we have ever
been in our history.'' That is what was said at the White House podium:
``stronger economically than we have ever been in our history''--
totally drunk stuff.
According to a Gallup poll, 56 percent of Americans now say price
increases are causing financial hardships for their families. That is
up from 49 percent a couple of months ago and 45 percent the previous
fall.
According to a Monmouth poll, nearly 9 out of 10 Americans say the
country is on the wrong track, but the White House is throwing wine and
cheese parties to celebrate the Inflation Reduction Act.
Americans have watched the President announce that he plans to force
noncollege graduates in Scottsbluff, NE, and Beckley, WV, to pay for
the debt burden of people with masters and Ph.D.s who live in Berkeley
and Bethesda. Let's be clear. Fifty-six percent of all of the student
loan debt in America is held by people with graduate degrees. The
majority of college loan debt in America is held by people with
graduate degrees, and about a third of Americans go to college. But
what we should do, Washington says, is take money from noncollege
graduates and give it to folks with graduate degrees. Then let's claim
it is somehow going to reduce the deficit. Drunk stuff.
Americans have watched as every basic household necessity has become
more expensive, from groceries to gas. Then they hear politicians
change the name of their bill to the Inflation Reduction Act and
applaud themselves for spending hundreds of billions of inflationary
dollars. This was on the steps of the White House on Tuesday afternoon.
Folks, this isn't just offensive; it is the kind of behavior and the
kind of dishonesty that poisons democracy. Politicians are saying
things here that are 180 degrees reversed from reality, and that cuts
to the issue of public trust. It doesn't just matter economically; it
matters civically.
The relationship between the American people and their leaders is a
relationship built on trust--a trust that, when elected officials are
at their desks in Washington, takes seriously the needs and desires of
their constituents. We have a bunch of people in Washington, DC, who
mistake the Washington, DC, elite experience, where the income of folks
who work for the Federal Government is substantially higher than that
of the median American. It attacks public trust. Elected officials are
not special. Elected officials, quite frankly, are often
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not that impressive. Elected officials are not demagogues. Public
servants are supposed to be serving the public.
It is in our job description to trust that the people we represent
actually know something about their struggles and their challenges and
their day-to-day difficulties of making ends meet. It is in our job
description to listen to them, to look at their experiences, and to
take them to heart. It is in our job description to think carefully
about the challenges they face and the ways we can address those
challenges, always with a mindful eye to the direction established by
our constitutional order and the best of our democratic traditions.
That relationship is destroyed when Washington, DC, breaks faith with
the American people, when it declares: You don't know what you are
talking about. You don't know what your experience is at the grocery
store checkout line. There is no serious inflation, and no serious
economist thinks inflation is coming.
The actual numbers are 13 percent grocery and 8\1/2\ percent overall.
These are late 1970s kinds of numbers.
Politicians know best.
No, we don't.
The relationship is destroyed when self-satisfied appointees and smug
bureaucrats in Washington bustle up and down Pennsylvania Avenue and
decide that division is more efficient politics than competent
governance. Lectures about the soul of America ring pretty hollow from
practitioners of this craven kind of politics of contempt.
Americans deserve better. Starting with honesty is a pretty good
start.
Here is honesty: We have an inflationary crisis on our hands, and the
reality is that inflation is making life a lot more difficult and a lot
more precarious for millions and millions of our neighbors. Our
families and friends are feeling pain at the pump and at the checkout
lines. They are watching their savings accounts and pensions be nibbled
away. They haven't imagined a hardship. This is reality--experiential
and economic reality.
The only thing that is misaligned is the rhetoric of this place, and
Americans won't be bludgeoned into believing that they are actually
thriving when they are experiencing 13 percent grocery inflation.
Things are hard, and the barest minimum this White House could do is to
admit it, to tell the truth, and to put away the party hats.
The American people are resilient. We are tough. We are not ready to
accept this as the new normal. We are going to work our way through
this, but we need less condescension and less spin. We need a lot more
truth-telling from those in power. We need fewer tone-deaf, wine-glass-
clinking parties from folks who have escalated inflation with reckless
spending and then claimed that the American people are wrong and that
this new spending will somehow reduce inflation. Nobody really believes
that.
The folks who are writing those press releases and those speeches and
inviting people to parties at the White House should reconsider. They
should tell the truth. It is hogwash, and they know it. More
importantly, the American people know it, and we should tell them the
truth.
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