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Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, last night, Americans once again went to the polls in an election where affordability--how much people have to pay for the things they really need--was the driving issue. A deep-red Tennessee district that Trump won by 22 points swung by double digits in Democrats' direction.
Last night was the latest flashing red light indicating Americans are fed up with Republican policies--particularly how much they have to pay for the things they really need.
Donald Trump doesn't get it. At yesterday's Cabinet meeting, Donald Trump once again doubled down on the bizarre claim that the affordability issue is somehow a hoax. Yeah, maybe it is a hoax for a billionaire like him and all of his cronies, who never have to worry about how much they have to pay for the things they need, but American people have to worry and worry about it every week when the bills come in, and they say: My income isn't equal to what I need to buy.
The costs are going up and up and up, in large part--in good part-- because of Donald Trump and his administration's policies.
So when Donald Trump says that affordability is somehow a hoax, he is on a different planet than the average American. At his Cabinet meeting, he called affordability ``a fake narrative'' and ``a con job.'' He said affordability ``doesn't mean anything to anybody.'' What a bubble he is in. He doesn't understand how the average person struggles each week, each month, to pay the bills.
Of all the ways Donald Trump could respond to people's worry about the high cost of living, he has chosen the worst strategy. He is telling Americans they are imagining things. Donald Trump--a man who has lived his entire life in the kind of luxury most people could never wrap their heads around--is pretending that high costs somehow don't exist. The man is a multibillionaire. The President of the United States, who is supposed to know what is on people's minds, is telling people that high costs that they pay each week don't exist. Well, their pocketbooks feel it. Their wallets feel it. Their bank accounts feel it.
Maybe things are going great if you are rich like Donald Trump, but for everyone else, things are getting worse, not better, when it comes to paying for stuff.
In a recent Axios-CBS poll, half of Americans said that food is harder to purchase this year than it was a year ago. That doesn't sound like a hoax--not to people who go to the supermarket every week and have trouble and look at those bills and say: How the hell did they get so high? It sounds, rather, not like a hoax, which Donald Trump seems to think it is, but a big problem every week for American families--the high cost of groceries and what they buy at the supermarket.
Seventy-four percent of Americans now say that the economy is either poor or just fair. Consumer confidence--one of the watch words of how good our economy is going to do in the future--is sinking.
This holiday season, the price of an 8-pound, bone-in spiral ham is up nearly 50 percent compared to last year--50 percent for a traditional Christmas dish. Beef prices are up 15 percent compared to last year. Canned vegetables are more expensive because tariffs made the packaging more costly even when those vegetables are grown here. Even something as simple as aluminum foil is up 40 percent compared to last year.
So, Donald Trump, hear the American people: Affordability--the high cost of paying for things--is not a hoax. People are struggling to pay for the things they need.
It is because of Donald Trump and his disastrous policies. His tariffs have effectively taxed each household around $2,000 a year. Tariffs sent retail coffee prices up 40 percent in September alone. And those tariffs were placed on places like Brazil. We don't grow coffee here in America, so what the hell is there a tariff doing there? Except it is a tax. That is the way Trump taxes people.
Tariffs have poisoned American manufacturing. This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that manufacturing has contracted for 9 months in a row. Manufacturing, one of the lifebloods of America, has been declining every month for the last 9 months. And what is the reason? Ask manufacturers. Tariffs are the No. 1 cost. Producers say it is getting more expensive to source the material they need to make their products. It is very simple.
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