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Floor Speech
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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to discuss the need to get our Nation and our economy back on track.
We learned this morning the new numbers have come out on inflation. Prices are higher today than they were the day that the Biden-Harris administration took over--by over 20 percent. I hear about it in Wyoming every weekend; I heard about it this past weekend, how high prices have become and the crushing effect that that has had on families in my State in Wyoming and all around the country. This has been going on now for over 3 years. Prices have continued to go up. And this crisis of high prices has been cumulative. The impact on families--cumulative. And it is, regrettably, causing very hard choices for families to make. It shouldn't be this way.
Here is a recent headline from CBS News. It said: ``More Americans are having to choose between food and energy bills.'' Clearly, this is a reflection on the Biden-Harris administration.
Now, one of those folks who talked about that--the quote is from Stacey Freeman. Ms. Freeman says her energy bills each month cost her hundreds of dollars. She told CBS News: ``Sometimes I have to choose,'' she says, ``whether I'm going to pay the light bill or . . . pay all the rent or buy food or not let my son do a sport.''
That is what has happened under the Biden-Harris administration--the impact of the high prices caused by the massive amounts of government spending passed without a single Republican vote that stimulated an amount of increase in prices--the highest in 40 years.
Ms. Freeman's story is, sadly, all too common. Many Americans are feeling the high cost and the high anxiety related to the high cost of goods and services in their lives. Nearly 4 out of 10--2 out of 5-- Americans say they worry about their ability to pay their own bills. Since 2019, utilities cost the average American almost $300 more each month--not $300 a month, $300 more each month--than what they were paying before. These are the costly and cumulative consequences of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's war on affordable and reliable American energy.
Mr. President, you ask people anywhere around the country, and they know this is an administration that has strongly come out against American energy. They froze Federal oil and gas leases. They discouraged new energy production. They issued regulations to ban gas- powered vehicles--the kind of vehicles most Americans drive. So it is not a surprise that high energy prices continue to bother and cause pain for American families.
Month after month, year after year, Americans watch their costs go up and, regrettably, see their savings, if they have savings, go down.
The Biden-Harris administration has offered no solutions to our Nation's cost-of-living crisis. Democrats, instead, tell the American people: Don't believe the pricetags at the grocery stores or the price at the gas pump. They want you to believe everything is OK. Americans know that isn't so.
We learned last month that the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is supposed to keep accurate unemployment data--well, they reported faulty numbers. A million jobs touted by the Biden-Harris administration do not actually exist. They never existed. They never were created. Yet the Biden-Harris administration claimed credit for jobs that do not exist.
Meanwhile, we have had 2 straight months where job growth was lower than expected.
America, today, has fewer manufacturing jobs than we did last year. In Michigan, autoworkers are getting laid off. Last month, the carmaker Stellantis announced plans to lay off more than 2,000 American workers from its plants in Detroit. This is the same carmaker that received hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies--a tidal wave of electric vehicle grants--from the Biden-Harris administration, and they are laying off people. Take the money from the government--from the Biden administration, from the Harris administration--and lay off workers.
It is no surprise that last night in the debate, Kamala Harris couldn't even answer the first question when they asked: Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago--are the American people better off now than they were 4 years ago? She could not defend herself, could not say yes, because people are not better off now than they were 4 years ago.
These recent layoffs--they come as they switch their assembly lines from gas-powered vehicles to electric vehicles. Thousands of American workers will soon be put in the unemployment line as a result of what Harris and Biden and the Democrats are continuing to promote.
Democrat regulations, Democrat rhetoric--a rhetoric of impending climate doom--are crushing American jobs. It is no wonder that Biden and Harris are now running from their record, and it is a record of ruin for the economy. Their flip-flops, walk-backs, the coverups--all too apparent.
The American people know that the policies of Vice President Harris have had a chilling impact on our American economy. When then-Senator Harris was rated the most liberal Member of the U.S. Senate, Americans listened. When Vice President Harris said recently that her values had not changed, people listened again. Americans are struggling, and Biden-Harris policies and the Democrat policies are to blame.
Remember how we got here: Democrats passed trillions of dollars in reckless, radical, runaway spending. It was so unpopular, not a single Republican voted for it. It had to pass with a tie-breaking vote. Who broke the vote? Well, the Vice President of the United States comes to the Senate to cast the tie-breaking vote, and that would be Kamala Harris, now the candidate of the Democrats for President of the United States. Vice President Harris came to this Chamber, sat in that chair, and cast the vote that broke the tie that brought us record-high inflation, 40-year-high inflation.
Americans cannot afford 4 more years of failure. Americans need a break from the damaging policies of Vice President Harris. What Harris is proposing is more wasteful Washington spending. Harris wants to raise taxes on the middle-class, impose socialist-style price controls. She supports banning fracking. She supports banning gas-powered vehicles. She wants to make energy more expensive. That is how she voted, that is what her rhetoric has been, and, as she said, her values haven't changed. Vice President Harris would continue the nightmare of high prices and high taxes.
Let's remember, it was different 3\1/2\ years ago under the Trump administration. Back then, paychecks were going up. Inflation was nonexistent. Americans were breaking free of poverty. Americans were energy dominant. Our southern border was safe and secure. Not anymore. People want to go back to those days of American prosperity again.
So it is time to turn the page from the disastrous policies of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Republicans will work to lower prices, to unleash American energy, and to get this Nation back on track.
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