[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.

[[Page S4807]]

  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

[[Page S4808]]

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.

                          ____________________