America Must Restore Fiscal Sanity
Floor Speech
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Mr. JOYCE of Pennsylvania. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for holding this important Special Order tonight on an issue that truly affects all Pennsylvanians and all Americans.
I thank Representative Smucker, my colleague, who is a true leader and a fiscal conservative, for bringing this discussion to the United States Congress.
Yesterday afternoon, I conducted a survey in my weekly newsletter, asking respondents if, during the past year, the rising costs of gas and groceries had cut into their savings, a relatively simple question. Eighty-nine percent of the responders said yes.
Unfortunately, this is a sad reality. It is a sad reality in the American economy that has been decimated by President Biden's failed tax-and-spend policies that put far-left gimmicks ahead of the needs of the American people.
During the Biden administration, at a time when small businesses across our country were begging for workers, we saw legislation that paid workers to remain at home. We saw the government mandates that had no basis in science, policies that did not account for natural immunity, policies that forced highly skilled workers to leave their jobs, which, unfortunately, again, helped to cripple our supply chains.
During the Biden administration, we saw the so-called infrastructure bill that spent more money bailing out windmills and solar farms and did nothing on fixing roads and bridges. We saw the poorly named Inflation Reduction Act, which the Congressional Budget Office says will increase our national deficit over the next few years.
This is no time to throw a party celebrating these priorities as inflation continues to rise. This is no party situation.
Time after time, we have witnessed an administration that cowers to the radical left and fails to consider that their own runaway spending has led to these soaring prices at the gas pump and at the grocery store.
When I was seeing patients as a physician, one of the issues that I would stress to parents is how important it was for them to provide milk, whole milk, for their children's growth, whole milk that supplies the necessary vitamins for bone development, brain development, and muscle development. In the past year, the cost of milk has soared 17 percent.
That kind of price hike is unsustainable, and no administration can take the health and well-being of Americans seriously while deliberately creating policies that make healthy choices, like whole milk, more expensive for American families, more expensive for the parents who need to supply that for their growing children.
The cost of eggs is up nearly 40 percent, and the cost of food overall has risen more in the past year than at any time since 1979 when Jimmy Carter was President.
To make matters even worse, real wages have gone down, and inflation has outpaced wage growth for the 17 months that Joe Biden has been in the White House.
The economic situation the American people find themselves in right now is unsustainable. In the second quarter of this year, household wealth in the United States fell by $6.1 trillion--a record drop that has left families unable to pay for the everyday expenses that they face.
As I traveled through my district in August--like my colleague, Mr. Smucker, spoke about--I talked to a mother who told me that she was making difficult decisions, decisions on whether to buy the necessary groceries for her family, for her children's lunches or put gasoline in the family car. No American should be making those decisions.
The record inflation that has put parents and families in this position is the result of failed policies that have wasted taxpayer dollars and flooded our economy with too much cash while simultaneously killing the supply chain and causing shortages throughout the market.
When we look at the liberal partisan legislation passed this past year, we see laws that choose winners and losers.
So let's take stock.
By handing out tax breaks for purchasing an electric vehicle and by offering money to companies who put up solar farms that fail to produce baseload power, the Biden administration has sent a clear signal to Pennsylvania's energy producers that they are not valued by Washington liberals.
By canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and putting a halt on new drilling leases, Joe Biden has made one thing clear: He has no interest in lowering gas prices. He has no interest in lowering energy prices.
Instead of pivoting to failed technologies like wind and solar that cannot be stored and that can only be used during peak hours, we need to return to the energy sources that are under the feet of my constituents in Pennsylvania: the coal, the natural gas, the oil, the Marcellus shale that can help to return our Nation to a position of energy dominance.
After dismantling nuclear energy, Europe is facing the worst energy crisis in a generation. By signing pro-Green New Deal legislation, President Biden seems intent on making the same mistake--the same mistake right here in the United States.
Digging out of that hole that President Biden and the far-left Members of Congress created will take some hard work, and it is time for Congress to stop the runaway spending on failed and untested programs.
We need to stop giving taxpayer dollars to Green New Deal priorities that only serve to hurt American families.
Right now, our communities are counting on us. The schools in our district are counting on us to get inflation under control. The families in our district are counting on us to get this runaway inflation back under control.
As President Biden creates crisis after crisis in our economy, one thing is very clear: We cannot spend our way out of the problems that the Biden administration has orchestrated.
We need to return to fiscal conservatism and pass legislation that supports Pennsylvania families, American families, instead of burdening them with crushing inflation.
Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for holding this Special Order.
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