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Floor Speech
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Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, Americans across the country are canceling their vacations, watching their 401(k)s shrink, and they are worrying about their week's grocery bill. Families are making very tight budgets, and they are having to stick to them because the prices have risen to historic highs. The price of ground beef is 36 percent higher than it was this time last year, as much as a steak dinner this time last year if you are buying hamburger meat. Businesses are raising prices on consumers in order to make ends meet. And if the costs of goods and basic services weren't high enough, skyrocketing gas prices have driven everything even higher.
This is our economic reality of now and for the future for the next few years. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle and all of us need to start discussing ways to help our country and ease the economic strain, but we are not doing that this week or next week before we go on recess. For some reason, we are hatching plans to spend more taxpayer money to pay for progressive policies and programs that might be needed, but the American taxpayers need help, and they need it now. Americans are suffering, and the Federal Government is not doing its part to help in the economic plan.
Let's take a step back and talk about how our economy got to this point with record inflation. We all remember 2020. The economy was humming along, and then a global pandemic hit all around our country and the world. It halted everything. It halted production. The economy was shut down. It came to a screeching halt--something none of us has ever seen.
But by the end of the year, the economy was showing signs of life. We were starting to open back up, and we were starting to move around, get people back to work, and get things hopefully back to normal in the very near future. As we rounded the corner, our Democratic colleagues, who took control of the House and the Senate and the White House, inherited an economy that wasn't great but was getting better. But instead of allowing free-market forces to return us to prosperity coming out of this pandemic, President Biden, in his rookie year of office, was like a kid in a candy store. I can remember it like it was yesterday.
He decided to go on a spending spree. He unveiled a plan to pump trillions of dollars into our Nation's economy in an unprecedented amount of government spending. Mere months after Congress passed the first COVID relief bill in December of 2020, our colleagues on the left began crafting a new bill for more Federal spending in early 2021-- again, just a few months after the first COVID relief bill was passed in December.
The left disguised a litany of progressive policies and programs as pandemic relief--I will never forget it--pandemic relief. But in reality, as of now--$2 trillion--less than 9 percent of the bill was targeted to COVID-related spending--9 percent.
Larry Summers, who was Presidents Clinton and Obama's top economic adviser, said the Democrats' spending package ``set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.'' He was exactly right. But Democrats pressed forward anyway and passed their so-called COVID relief bill, amounting to almost $2 trillion in spending--2 trillion. The result: Inflation began to soar. This injection of Federal stimulus into an economy that was already recovering was an economic train wreck. A lot of people saw it coming, even the expert economists.
Production came to a screeching halt during the pandemic, causing supply to plummet. Democrats' efforts to pump excessive stimulus into the economy caused demand to skyrocket. In short, supply went down and demand went up. The result of low supply and high demand has been the worst inflation our Nation has seen in decades.
Despite President Biden's Treasury Secretary claiming that the inflationary spike was just going to be temporary, prices continued to climb. And despite the very real, very clear evidence that their spending was the cause, Democrats moved into the fall of last year engaged in a discussion of even spending more.
In November 2021, Majority Leader Schumer said: ``Want to fight inflation? Then support Build Back Better''--referring to the name of their next massive spending package.
Our Democratic colleagues dismissed rising prices, saying they were a result of corporate greed. President Biden claimed: ``Inflation has everything to do with the supply chain.'' But he made no mention--no mention--of all the millions and billions of dollars that he had just spent.
Our colleagues on the left pointed fingers at everything but themselves and their reckless spending agenda, and now Democrats are trying to tell Americans that they will lower consumer prices by increasing government spending--again. And, again, that makes no sense. It makes zero sense, no economic sense.
Yes, as our country is under increasing economic stress, Democrats are reviving talks to spend more, which will further increase inflation. So let's be clear on this: This did not work last year, and it is not going to work now. Spending more taxpayer dollars on progressive policies is not the answer. It wasn't the answer last year, it is not going to be the answer this year, and it is going to cause inflation to even go up higher.
Senate Democrats' attempt to rebrand what was once known as Build Back Better is a last-minute attempt to deliver on failed far-left policy priorities before folks head on home and back to the ballot box in November.
This is President Biden's last-ditch effort to enact his administration's social priorities. Make no mistake, Democrats are trying to put lipstick on a pig and have working-class Americans pay the price. It should be telling to every American that the administration does not think of how they can help but how they can hide, how they can try to hide behind a blame game and convince you, the American taxpayer, the American people, that your economic pain is caused by something other than their actions.
The buck stops here in this room, not anywhere else. How they want to remake the country into a socialist state and have the taxpayer foot the bill is the direction we are headed.
Well, I can't say this more plainly: Raising taxes to enact a liberal wish list on policies in the face of a potential recession is a very, very, very bad idea. Americans and businesses would be forced to bear the brunt of billions of dollars in new spending, which would be paid for by raising taxes. For 6 months in a row, Main Street businesses have faced double-digit inflation, causing optimism to plummet to the lowest point in nearly 50 years.
President Biden recently boasted that his spending was ``changing people's lives.'' The President left out that it was changing people's lives not for the better but for the worse.
My colleagues, Americans are struggling. All over this country, they are struggling. Families are using their savings to pay for basic bills. Would-be retirees are delaying their retirement after they have watched tens of thousands of dollars vanish from their retirement accounts.
Farmers, family farms, are shouldering the burden of rising input costs like seed, fuel, and fertilizer. We have got worse things coming if this continues to happen to our farmers.
Small businesses are losing profits and making unwanted layoffs to stay afloat. We are going to lose a lot of small businesses, and small businesses made the United States of America.
If Democrats pass their reconciliation bill, nearly 62 percent of Alabama's small businesses and 1 million employees will be at risk of tax increases that they cannot handle in this inflation. I have been hearing from small businesses and small business owners across my State every day. They are worried about their livelihoods and are threatened by the economic policies of this administration.
Let's find ways to bring inflation down, not find ways to take inflation up. And that is exactly what we are doing in this Chamber.
One business owner in Sterrett, AL, told me that his earnings had gone down this year 50 to 60 percent.
It is truly astounding how the Democrats can look their constituents in the face and say that now is a good time to inject more spending into the economy just so they can pay for more progressive policies. It is absolutely absurd. They are expecting blank checks to be paid and be paid for by hard-working American taxpayers. They can't afford it. We are out of money. We are broke. And we need to quit spending the taxpayers' money.
President Biden and the Democrats are putting their agenda above the best interests of the American people, and it is cruel.
The solution to this mess, this huge mess that we have gotten into, is to cut taxes, cut regulations, and cut spending--just the opposite of what the Democrats are trying to do. Just the opposite. To change American lives for the better, Democrats should abandon any--any-- discussion of another tax or another spending spree. Americans have had enough. They have had enough of this. They want the American people in this country to survive, and they want us to quit spending money. It is time for us to listen to the people who own this country and not the Federal Government, which thinks they own this country.
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