The Economy

Floor Speech

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Mr. WICKER. Madam President, what the senior Senator from Iowa just said is exactly right, and unfortunately, the Biden inflation tax increase is real, and it is already here.

We warned about it earlier this year when our friends on the Democratic side decided to spend almost $2 trillion that was unnecessary, and here it is. Just the other day, consumer prices increased by 5.4 percent. This represents the largest year over year price surge since 2008. It is a tax increase on every American consumer.

And then today, even worse news, the producer price increased 7.3 percent. We are in an inflation problem. It is caused by this unnecessary spending spree that we have been on this year. We have known about it--now, we see the statistics--because we felt it at home.

And the senior Senator from Iowa mentioned what he was hearing during the break. Mississippians are paying more for a tank of gas, for a gallon of milk. They are paying more for a new home, for a used car. Used car prices have shot up by 10 percent since May and by 45 percent since June of last year--used cars, up by 45 percent. That is real inflation, and it affects real working Americans.

The hard reality is that our economy is now saturated with a tsunami of spending unleashed by the Democratic majority back in March, when party leaders abandoned what has been a balanced and bipartisan approach in the year 2020 to COVID relief. I would remind my colleagues that in February, the Congressional Budget Office had predicted our economy was already going to return to its prepandemic size by midyear without the spending of a new $2 trillion.

As the senior Senator from Iowa mentioned, Larry Summers, a longtime Democratic adviser, an adviser to President Obama, warned that more stimulus could overheat the economy and cause inflation. And more spending came and the economy got overheated, and we are faced with real statistics about inflation that cannot be denied.

Our Democratic friends brushed off that warning and instead pumped trillions more of borrowed money into our economy. Our Nation's money supply has increased by an unheard of 31 percent since the pandemic. Now, some of it, we had to do in the year 2020, when the economy had fallen off a cliff, but we are halfway through 2021, the Fed is still printing cash, and the majority party in this body seems intent on spending trillions more.

As a result, inflation is now eating away at family earnings, at bank accounts, at 401(k) savings accounts, most of which are shrinking as a share of the economy. Loss of purchasing power is making it harder for Americans to buy a home, start a family, or send their children to college. All of this should serve as a caution to all of us, to our friends on the other side of the aisle. This week's Consumer Price Index and today's Producer Price Index information are an early alarm bell signaling that this Congress and the Biden administration are courting runaway inflation.
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