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Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, summer is an exciting time of year for many Americans. It is a time for adventure, for relaxation, for quality time spent with friends and family. But, like seemingly everything else, summer activities are more expensive in the Biden economy.

The cost of gas for a family trip is up 45 percent since President Biden took office. Food for a summer cookout costs 10 percent more than it did last year. And fees for summer camp are giving parents sticker shock. Even just keeping the house cool has climbed 8 percent since last summer to over $700.

And, of course, this is a small sampling of what Americans have been going through for the past 3-plus years. Last week's inflation report confirmed again what Americans know all too well, inflation is still a problem. Overall, prices are up more than 20 percent since President Biden took office. The cost of groceries is up 21 percent. Energy costs are up 41 percent. Car repairs and maintenance are up 30 percent. And the list goes on.

All told, it costs a typical family $13,000 more per year to maintain the standard of living that family enjoyed when President Biden took office--$13,000 more, just to buy the exact same things you were buying 3 years ago.

As one mother of three told the New York Times:

We're spending way more to get the same amount of food that we were getting before.

The inflation rate has been elevated for 38 months. Understandably, many people are at the end of their ropes. Americans have dipped into their savings. They have taken out record levels of credit card debt, and a shocking report came out recently that said that more than a quarter of Americans have skipped meals because of inflation--skipped meals because of inflation.

The cost of dealing with inflation is adding to Americans' financial pain. To fight inflation, the Federal Reserve has been forced to keep interest rates high, which affects Americans' finances in a variety of ways. Many Americans turned to credit cards--racking up record levels of debt--to cope with inflation.

And higher interest rates, in part the result of the Fed's actions, are making credit card bills harder to pay down. The same is true for car payments. And Americans looking to own their own home are facing what one housing expert calls ``the most challenging home buying market we've ever seen.''

The average monthly mortgage payment is a staggering $2,800. The result of a combination of higher mortgage rates and higher home prices. And if you do own a home, a recent report found that the cost of keeping and maintaining it has gone up 26 percent since 2020 to more than $1,500 per month.

It is worth remembering that it didn't have to be this way. Three years ago, President Biden and Democrats forced through a reckless and partisan spending spree under the guise of pandemic relief.

They had been warned that spending so much risked setting off an inflation crisis unlike anything that we had seen in decades. Yet they chose to ignore those warnings and push through $1.9 trillion in new government spending. Inflation almost immediately began surging as a result.

It is the textbook definition of inflation: Too many dollars chasing too few goods. And then instead of learning a lesson, they moved forward with even more reckless spending plans.

Fortunately, the Democrats' $3.5 trillion Build Back Better spending spree failed to get off the ground, but they have steadily run up the debt with their so-called Inflation Reduction Act, whose true cost continues to grow.

And the student loan forgiveness schemes the President has put in place come with a price tag in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And it is clear that if President Biden gets a second term, there will be a lot more lavish spending on the docket. Plus, you have the President's proposed tax hikes, and then there are the expiring tax cuts.

In 2017, Republicans delivered tax reform that lowered rates across the board and allowed families to keep more of their hard-earned dollars, but those tax cuts are set to expire next year. And President Biden seems willing to let that happen.

That would mean a $1,600 tax hike for a typical family in 2026 on top--on top--of years of economic pain from Bidenomics and inflation. Let's hope the American people don't have to find out what that will feel like.

It is going to be another expensive summer in the Biden economy, and if President Biden and the Democrats have their way, there could be many more to come.

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