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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 20 percent. The Nation hasn't seen this sort of persistent drain on our economy since the Carter administration, and the Biden administration is desperate to avoid the obvious comparison to the stagflation back in the 1970s.

The White House recently asserted that ``President Biden's top priority is beating inflation, which is why he has taken historic action . . .''

Well, that begs the question: Which historic action are we talking about here? Is the administration referring to the time it invited historic inflation over the warnings of top liberal economists like Larry Summers but ignored that and went ahead with the so-called American Rescue Plan or the time they did the same thing again but called it the Inflation Reduction Act?

The Biden administration is still looking for a safe landing spot, and liberal commentators are literally tying themselves in knots. One liberal editorial board recently suggested that since employment and consumption levels are steady, ``people will . . . start to notice and the `vibes' will also return to more normal levels''; that ``[i]t's possible that Americans are experiencing the economic equivalent of a hangover.''

But, Mr. President, that is just utter nonsense and is not fooling anyone who actually has to balance a family budget. A recent survey reported that nearly two-thirds of middle-class Americans say they are facing economic hardship.

Numbers don't lie; neither do consumers. The high prices they are facing aren't a matter of ``bad vibes.'' They are the predictable and avoidable consequences of Bidenomics.

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