[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 128 (Wednesday, August 5, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Page S4467]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                Economy

  Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, the price of everything is up, and that is 
on purpose. It is on purpose because Donald Trump made it so.
  We are not in the middle of a pandemic or a recession or a national 
emergency, but the President of the United States has decided that 
Americans should pay more for everything--food, gas, electricity, 
healthcare, housing, clothes, everything. So while he is busy lining 
his pockets with crypto schemes and insider-information subscription 
programs, regular people can't afford their lives.
  Now, I say he is doing this on purpose because these are deliberate 
policy choices he has made. First, it was the tariffs that jacked up 
the prices of goods across the board. Tomatoes--tomatoes--went up 40 
percent. Coffee went up by 20 percent. Clothes and car seats went up by 
20 percent. Electronics shot up by hundreds of dollars. So it wasn't as 
if you could avoid the hit by not shopping at a particular store for a 
particular thing.
  People in Hawaii are very expert at figuring out ``OK, turkey is 
high; let's get chicken. Pork is high; let's get beef.'' The difference 
now is that there is no escape. Literally everything is up. That is 
because the President of the United States has decided, through this 
Iran war, through the tariffs, through the energy bans, through the 
Medicaid and Medicare cuts, through the ACA cuts, through the nutrition 
cuts, to make literally every aspect of your life more expensive.
  Then came the One Big Beautiful Bill where, in order to cut taxes for 
billionaires, Trump and the Republicans slashed subsidies for 
affordable healthcare and food assistance.
  I want you to understand. This sounds like the kind of thing a 
partisan would say, and it is, but it is also true that the way they 
paid for tax cuts for the wealthiest people and the wealthiest 
corporations on this planet--the way they literally paid for it--was to 
take away people's healthcare. Without the enhanced premium tax 
credits, ACA premiums went up by close to 60 percent. As a result, 
millions of Americans are living without healthcare this year. Millions 
of Americans are living without healthcare this year not by choice but 
by force.
  I want to read some of what those people had to say about it.
  A man in Texas said:

       The prices are simply too high. I don't think we could 
     afford our mortgage if I had to pay for health insurance. If 
     I have a catastrophic health event, it makes more sense for 
     me to just declare bankruptcy than it would to be delinquent 
     on other payments.

  Here is another one--a 38-year-old from Alabama:

       [I] can't afford insurance, [I] can't afford health care 
     without insurance, so basically just hoping and praying I 
     don't get sick . . .

  People are having to gamble on their health so that the richest 
people to ever live can pay even less in taxes. And the price hikes 
aren't over yet because premiums are set to rise by double digits again 
next year according to proposals from insurers.
  Aside from healthcare, the Republican tax bill also compounded 
Trump's ban on wind and solar energy. They are banning wind and solar 
energy, which is not only clean and helps us to address the climate 
crisis, it is just the quickest and cheapest energy that we could 
possibly get on the grid. It is not like we are in 1970 and we are 
arguing with the climate crisis versus the price that people pay on 
their utility bills.
  The way to address the climate crisis is to do a lot more wind and 
solar, and the benefit is that it is the cheapest form of energy. Yet, 
this President has banned wind and solar energy through their 
administrative actions, and that is spiking the price of utilities 
across the country.
  This is all before you factor in the war in Iran. In addition to 
being a spectacular failure that has achieved very little of Trump's 
own stated goals, it has also caused gas and energy and food prices to 
spike everywhere. Gas is over 4 bucks, right now, nationally, and it is 
even higher in Hawaii at $5.45. Diesel is $1.60 more than it was a year 
ago, which means that we are all paying more at stores for deliveries 
and transportation. In Hawaii, electricity bills went up 20 percent in 
1 month--20 percent in 1 month--because of skyrocketing oil prices. 
Food prices continue to climb everywhere as the closure of the Strait 
of Hormuz extends a global fertilizer shortage.
  It is common for Presidents to have to deal with the problems related 
to the economy. Specifically, what can be a real political killer is 
the question of inflation, but this is very unusual, and it may be 
unprecedented in American history. You have a President of the United 
States whose stated policy on tariffs, on energy, on Iran, on 
healthcare, and on food is to raise the price of everything. That is 
not a sort of accidental outcome of his economic policy; it is his 
economic policy to raise the price of everything.
  People are going broke, and they are doing it to you on purpose.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.