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Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, on Sunday, the President appeared on ``60 minutes,'' where he was asked what he was going to do to help alleviate inflation in light of August's continued grim inflation news and the resulting stock market nosedive.

The President's response?

Well, first of all, let's put this in perspective. Inflation rate month to month was just--just an inch, hardly at all.

``Let's put this in perspective''? That might be something to say if the inflation rate had ticked up from, say, 2 percent--the target inflation rate--to 2.1 percent, but I am pretty sure that that is not the appropriate thing to say when you are talking about the sixth straight month of inflation above 8 percent and the ninth straight month of inflation at or above 7 percent and the 11th straight month of inflation above 6 percent.

Even more concerning than August's consumer price index rising 8.3 percent from the same month a year ago was the increase in core inflation--a measure of inflation minus the volatile categories of food and energy. This measure increased to 6.3 percent in August, up from 5.9 percent in both June and July, suggesting that inflation is sinking its roots even deeper into various sectors of our economy--or in the words of a CNBC headline from last week:

Inflation isn't just about fuel costs anymore, as price increases broaden across the economy.

But, of course, you don't have to take my word for it about the mess that we are in. Here is what one of President Obama's top economic advisers had to say last week after August's inflation numbers came out:

Today's CPI report confirms that the US has a serious inflation problem. Core inflation is higher this month than for the quarter, higher this quarter than last quarter, higher this half of the year than the previous one, and higher last year than the previous one.

``Let's put this in perspective.'' That is what President Biden had to say? Here is the American people's perspective: Fifty-seven percent of Americans disapprove of President Biden's handling of the economy, and 37 percent of voters say that President Biden's policies have hurt them personally, versus just 15 percent of voters who say his policies have helped them.

These numbers are no surprise. The President may somehow still believe that he is creating an economy that will ``work for working families,'' but the reality is that, in the Biden economy, working Americans are suffering. Americans' utility bills are soaring; their grocery bills have ballooned; and they are paying $1.30 more per gallon every time they fill up their car than they were when President Biden was elected. Real wages have dropped every single month since Democrats passed their $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan spending spree--the bill, I would add, that helped plunged our economy into our current crisis. And 40 percent of Americans report having difficulty paying for their normal household expenses. Americans are dipping into their savings or working side jobs to make ends meet. They are charging more day-to-day expenses on their credit cards. In too many cases, they are having to visit food banks, which are seeing huge lines thanks to continued high inflation. What are Democrats and the President doing about this? Nothing.

Of course, last month, Democrats did pass a bill they called the Inflation Reduction Act. The problem? The bill will do nothing to reduce inflation--nothing. Again, you don't have to take my word for it. The nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model said this about the bill's impact on inflation:

The impact on inflation is statistically indistinguishable from zero.

``[S]tatistically indistinguishable from zero.''

Or you could take the word of the Democrat chairman of the Budget Committee, who admitted right here on the Senate floor that the so- called Inflation Reduction Act would not reduce inflation.

But it is not just that Democrats have done nothing to help solve our inflation crisis; they are also on track to make Americans' economic situation significantly worse.

In August, President Biden announced a massive student loan giveaway that could cost anywhere from an estimated $500 billion to more than $1 trillion and that the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget notes would ``meaningfully boost inflation.'' This is a statement from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget talking about the President's massive student loan giveaway, and they say it will ``meaningfully boost inflation'' or, as the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently put it, ``Amid 40-year-high inflation and despite the administration constantly touting its `fiscal responsibility,' these changes will recklessly add to the debt and make the Federal Reserve's job in fighting inflation even harder, which will amplify our risk of entering a recession.''

Many of us would argue we are already in a recession--two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.

Inflation has spent 8 straight months at 40-year highs, and the President has decided that now is a good time to implement a policy that will ``meaningfully boost inflation.''

The economy continues to show signs of weakening, driven in large part by the inflation crisis Democrats helped create. Major companies have recently announced job cuts. Sixty-three percent of small businesses are putting a hold on hiring, and 10 percent of those are cutting jobs. We have had negative economic growth, as I mentioned, for the past two quarters. So naturally--naturally--Democrats decided this was a good time to raise taxes on businesses. Yes, Democrats' so-called Inflation Reduction Act imposes new taxes on businesses to help pay for their Green New Deal spending.

I say ``taxes on businesses,'' but, of course, taxes on businesses largely fall on workers and consumers in the form of fewer jobs and opportunities, lower wages, and higher prices--in other words, pretty much the exact opposite of what we need right now, with prices soaring and wages failing to keep pace with inflation.

The Inflation Reduction Act also imposes new taxes on energy that will drive up energy prices for both American families and American businesses, imposing further pain on family budgets and likely prolonging our inflation crisis even further.

The President may have wanted to build an economy ``from the bottom up and the middle out,'' as he has described it; instead, he and his fellow Democrats have helped create an economy in which working families are struggling to make it from one paycheck to the next. And thanks to the additional tax-and-spend policies the Democrats have recently implemented, working families are likely to be struggling for some time to come.

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