Costs

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, Washington Democrats are trying to pull off a political spin job for the ages. Everyone knows that gas prices and energy costs have been soaring sharply for many, many months. Working families know all too well that gas prices and utility costs have been rising throughout President Biden's tenure.

Just this morning, we learned that inflation set yet another modern record last month. Prices skyrocketed another 0.8 percent in February alone. That comes out to 7.9 percent inflation year on year, the worst inflation in 40 years. And it keeps getting worse, not better.

This has been a painful pattern throughout President Biden's tenure. We have now had 9 straight months of inflation higher than 5 percent. And remember, 3 weeks ago, before the crisis in Europe, Democrats were already in a political panic over gas prices and desperately talking about a gas tax holiday. Three weeks ago, before the crisis in Europe, the average price of a gallon of gas had already shot up more than a dollar from when President Biden was sworn in.

Now, you would think the Democrats would have been proud of this. Hostility to fossil fuels and homegrown American energy is precisely what President Biden campaigned on. Here is what our President said on the campaign trail in 2020--a direct quote:

No more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry. No more drilling on Federal lands. No more drilling, including offshore. No ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period. [It] ends.

That was the President in 2020. Here is what he told an activist:

[L]ook at my eyes. I guarantee you . . . we are going to end--

End-- fossil fuel.

Now, President Biden spent 2 years campaigning on hostility to American energy. Now he has spent 14 months putting that hostility right into action, and Democrats' reckless spending that has fueled across-the-board inflation has made Americans' pain at the pump even worse.

But in the last few days, the Biden administration has tried to invent some laugh-out-loud--laugh-out-loud--revisionist history. They are trying to rebrand the entire increase in gas prices on their watch--listen to this--as an effect of Putin's recent invasion of Ukraine. So they want to blame 14 months of gas price increases on the last 2 weeks of turmoil.

Washington Democrats' war on domestic energy long, long predates Putin's war on Ukraine. So let me say that again. Democrats' war on domestic energy long predates Putin's war on Ukraine.

Now, I strongly support America stopping our purchases of Putin's oil, but Democrats' 14-month war on our own production will make that necessary action more painful for American families than it had to be. If the Biden administration had spent 14 months promoting American energy instead of attacking our production and fueling inflation, we would be better positioned to push back on Putin at a less painful cost to American families.

The President's team wants to pretend this lengthy problem only started 2 weeks ago, but American families have been paying for Democrats' bad policies for a lot longer than that.

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