Reduce Exacerbated Inflation Negatively Impacting the Nation Act
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from Minnesota for yielding.
Just to recap where we are from yesterday, the whole Congress eagerly awaited to hear what the big anti-inflation initiative would be coming from the GOP side of the aisle. In the past, Richard Nixon had offered wage and price controls. Herbert Hoover, of course, had dismantled all social spending. What was going to be the big plan coming from the Republican side? The big plan is to ask for the President of the United States, when he issues executive orders, to add inflation estimates.
Of course, there is no study showing that executive orders have had any impact on inflation or deflation in the country, so it seems now we are on a real wild goose chase where people are pasting all different kinds of things on it.
The gentlewoman from Minnesota actually comes forward with a very interesting idea, which would be a wonderful thing to talk about if we had a real hearing in the Oversight Committee about the subject. What she is saying is that a number of States, including my State, Maryland, have adopted the genuine progress indicator as a real index of social and economic well-being in their communities.
What this does is it doesn't count negative things like the costs of car accidents and asbestos poisoning as part of GDP. Right now, there are so many negative things that are included as part of GDP. The genuine progress indicator has, I believe, 26 different factors that measure actual progress in social and economic well-being.
If we are going to go down this road without a hearing, without any real analysis, and this is going to be the majority's approach to dealing with inflation, then, by all means, let's include the genuine progress indicator.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, now we move from the ludicrous to the absurd to the sublime.
Yesterday, they wanted a report from the President upon issuance of an executive order for executive orders having an inflationary impact or having an economic impact of $1 billion. Today, they have gone to one one-thousandth of that. They want a report for every $1 million.
The gentleman points out that I observed yesterday that it would apply to only a handful of executive orders, which is absolutely right. I wasn't arguing or wasn't concerned, as he said, that it applies to too few cases. I was just reflecting about how silly the whole exercise was.
They didn't even seem to understand how few executive orders it would apply to, just like they forgot to put into the legislation a requirement that it actually be published, something that was remedied yesterday in the Boebert amendment.
In any event, Mr. Chairman, now they want an inflationary estimate statement when there is an executive order that has $1 million economic impact, which, by my quick calculation here, is three one-hundred- thousandths of 1 percent of the $26 trillion U.S. economy. It is a fraction of the budget of the Oversight Committee itself. We may as well be saying we should register what the inflationary impact is of the majority and minority budgets in the Oversight Committee.
Obviously, this is an exercise in futility, in silliness. They are finger painting on their own legislation, which itself is not based on any legislative process, based on any hearing, and it obviously does nothing to reduce inflation.
That, however, is what this administration has been working on. Of course, they don't talk about unemployment anymore, which they used to talk about, because President Biden's administration created 12 million new jobs, whereas the last President destroyed millions of jobs. The economy has come roaring back under the Biden administration, just like the Biden administration is actually bringing inflation down.
Example: Check out the Inflation Reduction Act. Everybody who is on insulin in America under the Medicare program is now paying only $35 a month. Now, we know that they opposed that. We know they wanted to repeal that provision. I think they still do want to repeal that provision, but that was a very concrete action, to lower prescription drug prices for diabetics within the Medicare program. They have been lowered across the board within the Medicare program.
That is the kind of specific programmatic action that the Biden administration has undertaken, not a silly reporting bill, which some days is applying to a billion dollars, some days it is applying to a million dollars. There is no rhyme or reason to what they are doing.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, I don't know that there is much left to say on the substance of this amendment.
I did hear my colleague from Pennsylvania make some sort of disparaging remark about Maryland and about how he didn't live in Maryland, where, apparently, we don't understand the value of money.
Well, the land where we actually are standing today used to be part of Maryland. It was ceded by Maryland to Congress for the purpose of creating the District of Columbia.
When our Capitol came under attack by violent insurrectionists and those who were chanting ``hang Mike Pence'' and who were determined to overthrow the 2020 Presidential election, there were hundreds of police officers who came from Maryland to join the Metropolitan Police Department and the Capitol Police officers in defense of the Capitol of the United States.
I take umbrage at any insinuation that the people of Maryland need to take a back seat to anybody in terms of the defense of the principles of this country. I would thank Mr. Perry for a correction about that.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, yes, the prices of housing are too high, and the prices of groceries are too high. That is why the administration is working concretely to lower prices and why inflation is coming down now across the board.
What do we get from the majority today? They want a reporting bill about the inflationary impact in executive orders, nothing even about what Congress is doing and how Congress is behaving and contributing to inflation. They want to somehow add a technical reporting requirement for executive orders and think that is accomplishing something.
The administration is lowering the cost of student debt despite the fact that they are doing everything they can to stop it. The administration is acting to lower housing prices across the country. We have moved to lower prescription drug prices and healthcare across the country. They have been fighting us every step along the way. Instead, they come back with this reporting bill, which, again, will do nothing to help the fight against inflation.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, I am afraid I remain unilluminated as to what that amendment will do. Apparently, the purpose is to require a more detailed or technical description of the projected impact, or when an assessment required by the bill finds that there will be some inflationary effect.
Again, this sounds like it is simply adding more bureaucracy, more paperwork with no return on investment for the taxpayer dollars that it would obviously take to conduct such an analysis. I mean, here we have gone for more than two centuries with apparently no economist arguing that what we really need to stop inflation is more reporting in the process of issuance of executive orders by Presidents of the United States.
Suddenly, somebody had a great epiphany over there, without even a legislative hearing, that what was really needed was just for the President of the United States to append an inflationary statement to executive orders at the rate of a billion dollars, perhaps to be amended to a million dollars.
Who knows if it is 50 million or 100 million, but it doesn't make any difference because there is no data behind any of it. There is no analysis. You may as well spin a wheel and pick a number at which a report is going to be compelled by the majority here for the so-called REIN IN Act, which stands for the Reduce Exacerbated Inflation Negatively Impacting the Nation Act.
You could go by other titles, including the running on empty index, no new ideas, none act, since basically they are scraping the bottom to try to figure out something to say about inflation, because the administration is actually bringing inflation down.
Now, we notice they don't talk about unemployment, which used to be their mantra: jobs, jobs, jobs. But when Joe Biden came back and created 12 million new jobs after the last administration destroyed millions of jobs with their lethal recklessness in the mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic and Joe Biden turned it around in this administration, they stopped talking about it.
However, they did notice that there was global inflation going on because of the disruption of the global supply chain and because of Vladimir Putin's filthy, imperialist invasion of Ukraine, which some of their Members actually are cheerleaders for, then there was a real problem with inflation.
The administration has steadily been bringing it down, which is why it doesn't have quite the political salience it used to, but the world was waiting with bated breath to determine what their actual plan would be and, alas, their whole plan is a reporting requirement. Nothing to do with Congress and Congress being able to do anything, but a reporting requirement for the President when he issues executive orders.
I think the public is gravely disappointed by this complete collapse of any real commitment to the one issue they thought they had organized their conference around.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, one can only regard with amazement the gentleman's insinuation that I want to hand power to the executive branch when we have been acting here in Congress to pass the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and to pass the Inflation Reduction Act in the last Congress.
All of the measures they oppose, we moved in order to make real economic progress in the country. Congress was doing that.
They have a big opportunity today to come forward with what their anti-inflation agenda is. Their whole anti-inflation agenda is: we are going to beg the President of the United States to append some inflation numbers to an executive order, to a handful of executive orders over the course of the year.
The gentleman also, I think, slipped in his opposition to our legislation, which reduces to $35 a month what diabetics have to pay for their insulin shots. He calls this price-fixing.
My friend from Pennsylvania is invited to contradict me if I misunderstood him. I think he was describing all of the lowering of prescription drug prices we have done.
We are saving millions of Americans across the country thousands of dollars in their Medicare prescription drug prices, and the gentleman just called that price-fixing. I assume he is opposed to it.
Mr. Chair, I am happy to yield, if he would like to correct me, but otherwise I am going to go back with the conclusion that you are opposed to all of the lowering of the prescription drug prices that the Congress actually engaged in in the 117th Congress.
Finally, the gentleman would like to somehow put in our court the burden of bureaucracy.
Well, let's talk about the major bureaucracy that is being put in place in America today to violate the rights and the freedom of women to make their own medical decisions as they try to criminalize that.
I don't know exactly where the gentleman is--perhaps he can clarify it--most of them support a national ban on abortion, taking what was a constitutional right for more than a half century and turning it into a felony criminal offense or a misdemeanor criminal offense.
You want to talk about bureaucracy? You want to talk about police state? That is on you.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, I claim the time in opposition.
The Acting CHAIR: The gentleman from Maryland is recognized for 5 minutes.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries), the distinguished minority leader.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for his extraordinarily insightful and significant remarks.
The only exception I would take is when he referred to extreme MAGA. We actually had a colloquy about this yesterday with the good gentlewoman from Colorado.
I had gently suggested that perhaps our colleagues on the other side of the aisle could stop referring to ``Democrat Congresswomen'' with ``Democrat plans'' and ``Democrat bills.''
``Democrat'' is a noun. The adjective is ``Democratic.'' So it would be the ``Democratic Congresswoman,'' the ``Democratic bill,'' and so on.
I said it grates on our ears the same ways it would grate on your ears if every time we invoke the name of your party, we said the ``banana Republican Congresswoman'' or the ``banana Republican Member'' or the ``banana Republican Conference.'' That, we would consider a breach of civility and decorum, so would we prefer to go back to something else.
Yet, the gentlewoman from Colorado said, if I understood her correctly, that she would continue with her deliberate mispronunciation of the name of our party in its adjectival form.
By the way, she took the opportunity to raise the whole question of MAGA, which I had not mentioned. She said, and when you call me MAGA, don't call me MAGA--call me ultra-MAGA.
So when the minority leader referred to the extreme MAGA element, which appears to be driving the train over there, he should have called it the ultra-MAGA element out of deference to the gentlewoman from Colorado.
I certainly will be able to honor her wishes in the future as she chooses to be described as ultra-MAGA.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining?
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, so I believe our colleagues are coming clean. They opposed the American Rescue Act, which was absolutely essential legislation to get the country out of the Trump economic wreckage during the last administration.
We had 14.8 percent unemployment; the highest unemployment rate since the Department of Labor started keeping statistics.
Today it is down to 4 percent with the creation of 12 million new jobs under the Biden administration. So they shift the subject from unemployment, which they used to talk about, to inflation.
Well, they raised the debt limit themselves three times under Donald Trump who contributed 25 percent of the entire debt of the Nation between George Washington and Joe Biden.
Mr. Chair, 25 percent all came from the Trump administration, but they are looking for something to try to pin on Biden.
So rather than acknowledging that Putin's war in Russia and the disruption of the global supply chains caused by the coronavirus pandemic created a global inflation, and America is doing much better bringing it down than anybody else, they decide just to try to demonize and vilify Joe Biden.
Why? Because the cabinet is empty. The cupboard is bare. There are no ideas over there, as the distinguished minority leader said.
They are not offering any ideas--some reporting requirements, and they are doodling on that; should it be a billion or a million or hundred million.
Who knows? There has been no hearing on it, so they are making it up as they go along on the floor of the House. We can do much better as we did in the 117th Congress to get America moving again.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chairman, it is always a pleasure to hear my friend from Texas, Mr. Roy, who mentions something which sounded like a substantive suggestion about ending corporate subsidies, or perhaps I intuited or interpreted that.
If he wants to work on legislation with me on ending corporate welfare and corporate subsidies in America, I would love to do that.
That would be a serious step in the right direction, and I would love to work with him on that.
I take it by his suggestion that we rein in spending, something that I referred to when we talked about the Republicans raising the debt limit three times under Donald Trump, they had no problem with doing it back then and creating all of this debt, and we know that the former President was spending like a drunken sailor.
I take it that by not mentioning the legislation anymore, he is basically conceding that this bill will do nothing to bring down the inflation rate. It certainly will not. I don't know if they have been able to mobilize a single economist in the country who would argue that passing this legislation will bring the inflation rate down.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for introducing his amendment, which would add yet another reporting dimension to this already wasteful, bureaucratic paperwork exercise when what the American people need, deserve, and are getting from the Biden administration is real, tangible action to bring down prices in America.
What are we doing? Well, here is one of the things we are doing for older people who disproportionately depend on prescription drugs and people battling illness right now: We have dramatically lowered the cost of prescription drugs in the Medicare program for millions and millions of Americans.
We just heard someone on the other side of the aisle, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, call this price fixing. Well, here is an example of the price fixing that President Biden and the Democratic majority are engaged in. We fixed the price for people who were paying thousands of dollars for insulin shots. We fixed it by putting it down to $35 a month, and they oppose it.
Talk about inflation? What about inflation for diabetics? They don't count? We are not interested in inflation for diabetics, just for large corporations, the people who got more than $1 trillion in a tax cut from the last President? That is who we care about?
We don't care about millions of people who have diabetes in the country, who are spending thousands of dollars a year to pay for their insulin shots? Well, we cut that inflation down to $35 a month, and we get a lecture from them about how that doesn't count.
The Biden administration is trying to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from people who have to pay under a staggering student loan debt today, and they are fighting us on that. They don't care about that kind of inflation. They don't care about the pocketbooks of people who are staggering under student loan debt, 43 million people. We are talking about billions of dollars. Forty-three million people will be assisted by the student loan debt executive order and initiatives taken by the Biden administration, but that doesn't count for them.
We started this series of amendments by talking about the fact that they have this self-imposed political speech impediment. They can't correctly pronounce the name of our party in its adjectival form, but I thought of a solution to this because I was reading a great book by H.W. Brands about Franklin D. Roosevelt called ``Traitor to His Class.'' In the book, he has a bunch of Roosevelt's speeches. Do you know what President Roosevelt called our party? Not the Democratic Party, much less the Democrat Party. If you can't pronounce it, do what Roosevelt did. He called us the democracy. He said the ``economic royalists,'' the corporate plutocrats, say if you invest in the wealthiest people in society, some of the wealth will trickle down on everybody else, but the democracy says you invest in the great working middle class of America, and we will all rise and prosper together. That is the doctrine of the democracy.
If you can't pronounce the name of our party, just call us the democracy. That is what we are today because we defend the right to vote, and we defend free and fair elections, and we stand by the results of elections.
We defend not only the country and our democratic allies all over the world, as in Ukraine, but we defend this body; we defend this Chamber; we defend the Capitol of the United States; and we defend the interests of the working majority of Americans.
The American people are not asking for more reports and more bureaucracy. They are asking for action, and that is what the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress are giving them.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Chair, the Biden administration brought Trump's unemployment rate, which was skyrocketing, down. We went from 14.8 percent to less than 4 percent, creating 12 million new jobs.
Now, President Biden is bringing down the soaring inflation rate he inherited because of the massive disruption in global supply chains caused by the lethal recklessness of the Trump administration in mismanaging the pandemic response.
We are saying, let's finish the job. Just as we brought unemployment down, we are bringing inflation down. We are making the American economy work for the American people through strategic investments like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a $1.2 trillion investment in the roads, the highways, the bridges, the ports, the airports, and broadband across the country, in rural areas.
President Biden is fighting for investment in the American people, and that is what the Democrats are fighting for, not a bunch of reports. We don't need this legislation.
Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.
A recorded vote was ordered.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source