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Floor Speech
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Mr. KENNEDY. I want to speak on two topics.
First, on inflation, President Biden's economic policies, unfortunately, have water-boarded the budgets of most Americans and most Louisianians. We see the official statistics, and the statistics are that inflation is going up 7 percent. I understand that is what the experts say, but most Americans and most Louisianians know that inflation is much worse, much worse.
I am sure that has been the experience of the good people of Georgia as well. I mean, I did some calculations before I came down today. From December of 2020 to December of 2021, the most recent numbers we have, gasoline is up 49.6 percent.
In my State, in Louisiana, it costs Louisianians $27 more than it did last year to fill up the tank of a Chevy truck. That is every time they fill up the tank.
Used car and truck prices have increased by 37.3 percent. In New Orleans, for example, in my State, used car prices were up 38.2 percent through last September.
We all have to eat. Meat, poultry, fish, eggs, up 12.5 percent.
New vehicles, if you can find one, up 11.8 percent.
Household furnishings and furniture, up 7.4 percent. Electricity, up 6.3 percent and headed higher. Clothes, 5.8 percent. Fruits and vegetables, 5 percent. Cereals and bakery products, 4.8 percent. And I could keep going.
The truth is that most Americans are having to spend, on average, about $3,500 more per year because of President Biden's inflation.
Now, to some people, that may not sound like much, that is a lot of money for people in my State. An extra $3,500 out of the budget of most working Americans is a lot.
You know, I wish it weren't so, but this inflation has been caused by the Biden administration's economic policies. Inflation is not complicated. It is too much money chasing too few goods.
President Biden's coronavirus bill was the tipping point. That is clear. Now, we all voted for a number of coronavirus bills, but the last coronavirus bill was way too expensive. It was unnecessary, and it wasn't a coronavirus bill.
The President said: Oh, we have got an emergency. We have got an emergency.
And then you read the bill and find out that the bill has got nothing to do with the coronavirus and the money is going to be spent over like a 10-year period. That is not an emergency.
The current inflation has characteristics--I have not seen this--of both cost-push and demand-pull inflation, and it can be traced directly to the economic policies of the Biden administration.
And the Biden administration keeps pushing. He keeps trying to stuff more diapers down the toilet. The Biden administration wants to throw another $5 trillion--not billion, not million, but trillion--of gasoline on the fire in the Build Back Better bill. And if we pass that, there will be another trillion dollars.
I mean, this administration spends money like it was gully dirt. I have never seen anything like it.
And then we have inflation. We have all this liquidity, which leads to inflation, and the Biden administration will not accept responsibility.
President Biden has blamed inflation--he blamed it first on COVID. Now, I will admit COVID is spreading, but I don't see people walking around coughing inflation on each other. Then he blamed it--I think he blamed it on China for a while. Then President Biden blamed it on greedy corporations. I expect next he will say that inflation originated in a bat.
But the truth of the matter is, it is not complicated. It originated with his spending policies, and it is just killing my people. It is killing them.
And, as you know, we have a lot going on here in Washington and a lot of issues in front of us that are important--Ukraine, for example. The President shortly is going to nominate a new member to our U.S. Supreme Court. We have a multitude of bills that we are considering, and all of those are important.
But inflation is important too, and it is hurting the American people, and it is hurting the least among us the most. Yes, we are seeing inflation in terms of services, but we are seeing inflation more in terms of goods, and low-income Americans, as you well know, spend proportionately more of their income on goods than they do on services.
The President's policies, I regret to have to say, have administered a sucking chest wound on the budgets of the people in my State and the people of America, and it has got to stop.
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