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Floor Speech
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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the Biden administration spent the end of last week boasting that our economy added back more jobs in January than some economists had predicted, but American families aren't buying their spin.
The working men and women of this country know painfully well that the Biden administration's economy is failing them. One typical recent survey showed a majority of Americans disapprove of the President's job performance, and Democrats' poor handling of the economy is a major factor.
So let's be clear. The country was always--always--guaranteed to add back jobs following the 2020 COVID recession. The Biden administration did not create the vaccines, it did not create this milder variant, and it is not owed particular credit for the fact that our economy is continuing to climb out of the crater caused by the 2020 lockdowns.
Our trajectory of adding back jobs has stayed remarkably consistent from late 2020 up through today. Job growth under President Biden has just kept bumping along the trajectory that he inherited-- notwithstanding that Democrats blew trillions of dollars on supposedly job-creating policies in the meantime.
There has been no noticeable acceleration in job growth relative to the baseline that was forecast before Democrats took power, but inflation, on the other hand, has absolutely soared relative to those forecasts. Consumer prices exploded by 7 percent in 2021--the worst inflation in 40 years. More than 80 percent of Americans say the cost of everyday goods have shot up, and two-thirds disapprove of the job President Biden is doing to help their wallets.
Even though American workers have been earning pay raises, inflation is leaving them with less purchasing power than they had in the first place. Once you factor in inflation, the average American has gotten a 2-percent real pay cut--cut--under Democratic policies. According to one calculation, only in one single sector across the entire economy did wage growth outpace inflation last year. That was leisure and hospitality, as those incredibly hard-hit sectors rebounded from their especially nightmarish 2020. Everyone else, on average, got a pay cut.
The average retail worker got an inflation pay cut; same with miners and loggers--inflation pay cuts. Construction workers, manufacturing workers, and transportation workers got inflation pay cuts, and on and on. Americans know that Democrats' failed policies are the reason.
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