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Floor Speech
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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, today, Donald Trump will travel to Pennsylvania and try to convince the American people that he is lowering their costs, but the American people, seeing their costs go up left and right, aren't going to buy it. Tonight, Donald Trump will throw a barrel of hay into the audience and tell them it is spun gold, but the American people know he is lying because everywhere they look, prices are going up and up and up.
We have all read how the White House very soon will start getting ``serious'' about messaging more on affordability. They don't get it. The problem is that affordability is not a messaging issue; it is real. It is real when people go to the supermarket or buy a car or try to buy a house or see their electric bill, their healthcare bills.
The American people know it is real, and Donald Trump tries to wish it away. He believes that people will believe his words when he says it is a hoax. They won't. They won't. There aren't enough speeches in the world to paper over the fact that Donald Trump has sent costs up and up, not down. His tariffs raised the price of groceries, raised the price of clothing, raised the price of energy. And it is not just his tariffs. It is his policies that cut out the cheapest form of energy we have: clean energy. It is his policies that allow food producers to get away with monopoly pricing. It is his strategy to impose tariffs on the American people and say: It is good for you.
The fact is that Donald Trump can do nothing to erase this, that life is more expensive under Donald Trump than it was before he took office. He will hate to admit it, but life is more expensive under Donald Trump than it was under Joe Biden.
Just 36 percent of Americans approve of his job and the job he is doing on the economy. Thirty-six percent of Americans--that is it-- approve of the job Trump is doing on the economy, according to a poll by Marquette University, which is widely respected. Even a significant portion of Trump voters--37 percent--say the cost of living is the worst they can ever remember, according to POLITICO. So when Trump voters say it was better under Biden than it is now, whoa, something is wrong.
So, no, Donald Trump, affordability is not a hoax; it is not a Democratic scam. You try to make everything, even the most commonsense things, partisan.
The affordability crisis is very real. It is being felt by everyone, and the American people know it is Donald Trump's fault. No speech in Pennsylvania or anywhere else can undo that.
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