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Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, yesterday's CPI report told Americans what they already knew all too well: The disastrous effects of Washington Democrats' spending binge last year still have our economy in a vice grip.

Year-on-year, inflation has hit 9.1 percent for the first time since the fallout of the Carter administration. And the signs are inescapable. Price hikes on everything from food to fuel to housing are setting new multidecade highs.

A shopper out in Oregon told a reporter recently she doesn't buy beef anymore. Here is what she said:

We kind of try to eat what we have while we have it.

Yesterday, we learned exactly what she and millions of Americans are up against: the fastest rising grocery prices since 1979.

In Nevada, the owner of a local diner says:

My concerns are that my food costs have escalated dramatically. I used to gut wrench about [raising menu prices] 2 or 3 percent. Now it is way more than that just to keep my doors open.

Yesterday's report says he is not alone. Nationwide prices for food outside the home haven't risen this fast since back in 1981. And this new reality is especially frustrating for those working to help.

As the head of one South Dakota food bank put it, ``The donation load seemed to lighten up. . . . When we give out food boxes, they're not as full as they used to be.''

Right as working families are struggling the most, so are the organizations trying to help them. Just one more cruel twist of Washington Democrats' runaway inflation.

One of the first and most painful consequences of the Biden administration's failed policies have been the soaring costs of energy. Remember, on their party's watch, the cost of heating a home rose by double-digit percentages last winter. Electricity prices climbed at their fastest rate since 2006. Prices at the gas pump have doubled since President Biden took office. One Pennsylvania woman said that ever since her heating bill skyrocketed last winter, she has had to scale back her spending big time. Here is what she had to say:

I need to hide under my bed and save every dollar I can.

And in Maryland, one retiree reports that ``skyrocketing gas prices mean that visits to the local library--about 5 miles round trip--no longer feel free.''

From day one, the Biden administration has worked overtime to make it harder to produce the most affordable and reliable forms of energy that Americans rely on at home. Now, as their radical climate agenda takes its toll on domestic production, millions of Americans are facing the possibility--listen to this--of summer blackouts.

The heartland, the West, and the Southwest face the highest risks. The people of Arizona and Nevada, for example, are already at what experts call ``elevated risk'' for this summer.

Are Arizonans and Nevadans clamoring for a new tax hike on natural gas electricity on top of everything else? I doubt it. Are they desperate to double down on the very unreliable green sources that set us up for these blackouts in the first place? I don't think so.

Our electric grid is overburdened already, but Democrats apparently want to strain it even more by eliminating the most reliable sources of energy we have, all the while spending hundreds of billions on schemes that depend on Chinese minerals, components, and supply chains.

Trading American energy independence for less reliable sources that depend on forced child labor and foreign producers with questionable environmental standards--really, is this what our colleagues think will usher in a big transition to green daydreams?

Washington Democrats are the only ones who would define higher energy costs and lower reliability as a victory. Real-life Americans know that higher costs and rolling blackouts are just two more symptoms of a failed government with failed leadership pushing failed policies.

Working families are still reeling from the time Democrats decided to spend us into inflation. They have got no appetite for being taxed into recession.

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