Inflation
Floor Speech
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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, at this time last year, Washington Democrats were beginning their quest to dump trillions of dollars in leftwing spending on a recovering economy that already had the preconditions for some inflation. Everybody warned Democrats to pump the brakes. Just weeks earlier, Republicans had already supported a smaller, targeted, bipartisan stimulus that had barely started to take effect. Even top liberal economists warned the Democrats' agenda could spark massive inflation.
The consequences for working families have been particularly harsh. Essential goods have played an outsized role in driving up prices overall. It is harder to put dinner on the table when eggs, meat, and fish are 12 percent more expensive. It is harder to fill up cars with gas that is 40 percent more expensive and to heat a home with natural gas that has gone up 24 percent or fuel oil that has gone up 47 percent. This is reality for millions of Americans. They are living it every single day.
Yet the Biden administration seems less interested in trying to solve this problem than in trying to persuade families that the pain is actually just in their heads. One recent story reported that members of President Biden's team were ``seemingly mystified'' about why the American people weren't celebrating this economy.
Well, if Washington Democrats spent 5 minutes talking to a middle- class family, I am confident they would cease to be mystified. The middle 40 percent of American earners have seen their disposable incomes fall more than an entire percentage point over the last year-- entirely due to inflation. Any American who hasn't managed to secure an 8-percent pay raise in the last year has actually received a real pay cut, thanks to Democrats' inflation.
The American people are reporting their lowest consumer sentiment in over a decade. Seventy-five percent say our economy is doing badly. Almost 80 percent expect inflation to get worse. Six in ten say their family's income isn't keeping pace with their costs of living.
These are not statistics the White House can wave away. We are actually talking about human pain. A working mother in Michigan said:
I cannot buy the food that I would normally buy for my family.
In Washington State, a single mom of four who also cares for her elderly parents says she has had to take favorite family foods like frozen pizza and wings and make them ``more of a treat than just a regular meal.''
This is where Democrats' policies have left working families.
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