Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act of 2021

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, moments ago, the country got yet another terrible monthly inflation report under the Biden administration. Yet again, the data confirmed what working families already know painfully well: Rampant inflation and soaring prices are crushing--crushing--the American people.

Experts had predicted another red-hot inflation report, around 7 percent. Even that alone would have meant we were still trapped inside the worst inflation in 40 years, but reality turned out to be even worse than that. It turns out inflation this past year hasn't been 7 percent; it has been 7\1/2\ percent. In other words, if you haven't personally gotten a pay raise of 8 percent or more in the last year, then Democrats' policies have given you a pay cut--pay cut.

To add insult to injury, reporters say the worst of this inflation was driven by the most painful categories for working families: food prices, energy prices, and rent.

This is not about financial inconvenience for wealthy people who can afford to stomach it; this is about massive price increases for essential goods that make up a huge share of working families' budgets. Gas is up about 40 percent since this time last year. Used car prices are up about the same. Meat, fish, and eggs cost over 12 percent more than they did just 1 year ago. The cost of natural gas for home heating has soared by 24 percent since this time last year. Fuel oil has shot up almost 47 percent. The cost of essentials has absolutely exploded since Washington Democrats took power.

To be clear, the worst inflation in 40 years is not something that just spontaneously happened to Democrats on their watch. As a Pew report demonstrated late last year, it is true that countries around the world are facing inflation--they are--as a result of COVID, but America has it worse than almost everybody else in the developed world. This is a direct result of liberal policy choices.

Here is how Jason Furman, President Obama's CEA Chairman, explained it recently. I will quote from the New York Times:

``The United States has had much more inflation than almost any other advanced economy in the world,'' said Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard University and former Obama administration economic adviser, who used comparable methodologies to look across areas and concluded that U.S. price increases have been consistently faster. The difference, he said, comes because ``the United States' stimulus is in a category of its own.''

Obviously, he is referring to the $2 trillion so-called rescue package last year.

The severity of this inflation was directly fueled by the reckless, far-left spending spree that every single Democrat in this Chamber voted to ram through at President Biden's behest last year.

Even the most prominent liberal economists knew this would happen and tried to warn the Democrats. A year ago, Larry Summers warned that Democrats' binge could set off ``inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.'' Ah, but Democrats ignored their own experts. They plowed ahead, using the pandemic as a pretext--a pretext--to dump $2 trillion into left-wing policies that were overwhelmingly unrelated-- unrelated--to the healthcare fight against the virus, and we see the results all around us. Families are living with the results every day.

As recently as the last few days, some of my Democratic colleagues have come here to the floor to boast about the increase in nominal wages. They want a round of applause because the numbers on many Americans' paychecks have gone up. But that is staggeringly out of touch with the reality. Yes, in an inflationary spiral, lots of people will see the numbers on their paychecks go up. The problem is that even those bigger paychecks are buying Americans less in real terms today than their smaller paychecks bought them before Democrats were sworn in.

It is like this: Democratic policies have created an inflation riptide that is forcing families and small businesses to swim as fast as they possibly can just to avoid getting sucked out to sea, but Democrats are trying to call this a success because of how fast everybody's arms and legs are moving. Talk about an absurd effort to spend your way out of reality. The truth is plain for everybody to see.

A few weeks ago, the Washington Post ran a story with the headline ``'That raise meant nothing:' Inflation is wiping out pay increases for most Americans.'' The story explained, and this is a direct quote:

[M]any [workers] said that despite considerable pay raises--as much as 33 percent, in some cases--they were still struggling to cover basic expenses. Several workers said they had taken second jobs to keep up with rising costs for groceries, gas and rent.

So American workers are not buying the Democratic spin for 1 second. One year after President Biden took office with massive economic tailwinds at his back, with an economy that was primed for a roaring comeback, 75 percent of Americans say our economy is doing badly. About 90 percent of Americans say they are concerned with inflation. Ninety percent of Americans say they are concerned with inflation. A 60- percent supermajority say their family's income is falling behind the cost of living.

It didn't have to be this way. This was a policy choice. This all- Democratic government was warned that their radical agenda would supercharge inflation, and they pushed ahead anyway, and our country is paying the price.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source