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Floor Speech
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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, since President Biden took office, consumer prices have risen more than 16 percent. American families are paying 20 percent more to put food on the table than they did in January 2021 and 36 percent more on energy. But over more than 2 years of Washington Democrats' runaway inflation, President Biden's top advisers have refused to even admit that it is a problem, let alone that their policies are driving it.
In early 2021, after Senate Democrats helped ram through the administration's reckless taxing-and-spending spree, one top White House adviser insisted that any inflationary effect would be ``transitory.''
Eight months deeper into the administration's inflationary spiral, the same adviser insisted that inflation would be ``growing half as fast a year from now''--another fanciful prediction overcome by the harsh, painful consequence of Washington Democrats' reckless spending and another instance where Jared Bernstein--President Biden's choice to serve as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers--was simply dead wrong on economic advice, dead wrong.
The CEA was designed to produce objective, empirical economic analysis. With the rarest of exceptions, it has been led by a seasoned economist with a Ph.D. in the field. That streak would end with Mr. Bernstein.
The nominee the Senate will consider this week can more accurately claim expertise in partisan warfare than economics. He has been labeled in the press as President Biden's ``man on the left.''
In his own words, Mr. Bernstein's long record of progressive fantasies speaks for itself. For example, he said:
We should not kid ourselves into thinking . . . that we can pay for Medicare for All and a jobs guarantee solely by taxing the rich.
The nominee has called abortion ``at its core an economic issue.'' He urged Democrats to ``take the Green New Deal seriously.'' And last year, he praised a nearly $80 billion plan to expand IRS enforcement as one of his favorite parts of President Biden's so-called Inflation Reduction Act. What a staggering--staggering--lack of awareness of the way his party's policies have hurt working families across our country. So the American people cannot afford Jerry Bernstein at the wheel of CEA.
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