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Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the failures of Bidenomics and to talk about the devastating impact Bidenomics has had on American families.

Certainly, people in Wyoming are worried about the high cost of groceries. I hear it every time I am at the grocery store. People wince every time they fill up the gas tank. People have turned to either raiding their savings accounts or taking on increasing debt just to stay up to the current cost of living.

President Biden has a message for all of these people who are wincing as they fill up, who are worried about the cost of groceries, and who are raiding their savings accounts. Joe Biden's message to them is just this. He says: Don't believe your lying eyes. That is what he believes.

Tomorrow, the President will be in Colorado, and he is going to say some things that the American people just will not believe.

He will say inflation is getting better. He will say Bidenomics is working. He will say that anyone who believes anything other than that is just a victim of misinformation. Well, that is not what the families of America are feeling. Americans know that they are subjected day in and day out to incredibly high prices, and they know that Joe Biden is the President of high prices.

Before Thanksgiving, we got new inflation data, and prices went up again. Prices are now over 17 percent higher today than they were the day Joe Biden took office. In real terms, families are paying over $900 each and every month more now for their cost of living than they were for the same things the day Joe Biden came into office. Americans are feeling it everywhere but specifically in the cost of gas, the cost of groceries, and the cost of everyday goods.

As prices continue to go up, people are falling further and further behind when it comes to trying to pay their bills.

Let's look at personal savings accounts. Do people have more money or less in their bank accounts now than they did before? Well, the answer is clearly they have less. Bidenomics is forcing three out of every five Americans to live paycheck to paycheck.

Let's look at personal debt. Credit card debt now exceeds $1 trillion. This is a record high in the history of the United States.

Let's look at interest rates. Americans are maxing out their credit cards just to get by, and they are having to do it at higher interest rates just to pay their bills, so their debt number continues to go up.

Under Bidenomics, Americans barely have enough money to pay their bills, let alone save for the future.

President Biden equates Bidenomics with the American dream. So what do people think about the American dream? Well, for most families right now, that American dream is further and further out of reach than it has ever been before.

According to a recent poll by NBC News, only one in five Americans today feels confident that their children's lives will be better than their lives were. That is an alltime low, and this is talking about the future and the loss of hope for a better future.

President of the United States Joe Biden is disturbingly out of touch. According to NBC News, President Biden is baffled--baffled--that the American people are unhappy with the state of the economy. It is not baffling; it is the definition of ``Bidenomics.'' Americans are unhappy with the economy because they don't like paying 20 percent more for food, $1 more for a gallon of gas, or 8 percent mortgage rates. So why is the President of the United States so disconnected from the feelings of everyday Americans?

Well, hard-working Americans deserve better leadership than what they have gotten out of this White House for the last 3 years. On issue after issue after issue, President Biden's actions have made matters worse. He has continued and increased wasteful Washington spending. The Democrats are as guilty as he is. He keeps attacking our affordable, available, reliable American energy, and my home State of Wyoming is America's energy breadbasket. He has pursued the costliest regulatory burden in American history. The regulations coming out of this administration are penalizing and punishing and are costing the American people a lot.

Let there be no confusion that the policies of Joe Biden and the Democrats are why families have suffered the worst inflation in 40 years. Democrats have done nothing to correct course or steer the economy in the right direction. Instead of working to cure inflation, Senate Democrats tell Americans to endure it. They are pushing policies that increase spending and choke off American energy--policies that keep driving prices and costs higher.

Two weeks ago, President Biden met with the Chinese President, Xi. It was their first face-to-face meeting this year, 2023. Tensions with China continue to rise. Yet President Biden seems more eager to appease President Xi than to address China's serious threat to America's economy and safety. None of this lowers the cost of living. None of this makes our country stronger.

Republicans have solutions to get the country back on track. Our solutions will lower the cost of living, will increase wages, will reduce Washington redtape, will unleash American energy, and will end our Nation's dependence on China.

In this Congress alone, Republicans have put forward legislative solutions--workable, meaningful solutions--to restore a strong economy. We have introduced bills to reverse these political mandates and eliminate these punishing regulations. We have introduced bills to end America's dependence on China, reduce dependence for manufacturing, reduce dependence for medicines, and to promote our own manufacturing. We have introduced bills to increase America's production of oil, gas, coal, and critical minerals. That would immediately lower the cost of energy and groceries for families all across America.

Under Joe Biden and the Democrats, America is heading in the wrong direction, and by overwhelming numbers, the American people will tell you that.

Republicans have solutions to make a difference--to lower prices, to unleash American energy, to secure the southern border, and, in time, to get America back on track. The time to act is now.

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