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Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, America has always been a place where, if you work hard, you can get ahead. But it is a lot more challenging in the Biden economy.

Inflation has dealt working families a series of setbacks that have made it harder to get ahead, and it is, in large part, due this administration's reckless spending.

Madam President, 3\1/2\ years ago, Vice President Harris cast her first tiebreaking votes in the Senate to advance a $1.9 trillion spending bill under the guise of pandemic relief.

She and our Democratic colleagues had been warned that that level of spending risked setting off inflation unlike any we had seen in a generation, but they passed it anyway.

And inflation began to take off almost immediately. And 3 years later, prices have gone up more than 20 percent; groceries are up 21 percent; the cost of car repairs are up 31 percent; energy costs have gone up 40 percent.

Nearly every aspect of daily life is more expensive in the Biden- Harris economy, and Americans are struggling to make ends meet. More than one-third of Americans are worried about paying their bills. They are pulling back on their spending and putting more on their credit cards. Some people are even taking on extra work just to get by, but sometimes it is still not enough.

As one new mom in Missouri put it:

It's just hard. I work full time. My husband works full time. I feel like at this point, we're moving more towards survival mode, rather than thriving.

Another mom in Virginia says of her sons and their wives:

[E]verybody is working as absolutely hard as they can. They are not farther ahead than my husband and I were 30 years ago.

Another woman, in Pennsylvania, who is working two jobs, says:

Prior to inflation, I didn't have any debt, I didn't have any credit cards, never applied for like a payday loan or any of those things. But since inflation I needed to do all those things. . . . I've had to downgrade my life completely.

They are not alone. For many Americans, life in the Biden-Harris economy feels like a downgrade. It now costs a typical family $13,000 more per year just to maintain the same standard of living it enjoyed when President Biden took office--$13,000 more per year just to tread water.

That is an incredible strain on families' budgets. And it is not just higher prices. Measures to tame inflation have also added 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.

As I said, many Americans have turned to credit cards to cope with inflation. And higher interest rates, in part, the result of the Feds' 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 called ``the most challenging home buying market we have ever seen.''

The average monthly mortgage payment is a staggering $2,6000--the result of a combination of higher mortgage rates and higher home prices.

The White House has spent a lot of time trying to spin the economy as strong, but the American people aren't buying it. An economy where people are working harder and still struggling to get by isn't what most Americans consider a strong economy. And it can't be America's future.

I said inflation began accelerating as a result of Democrats' reckless spending. That is not a Republican talking point. It is a fact with which Democrat economists agree.

Yet the Biden-Harris administration and congressional Democrats show no signs of backing off their reckless tax-and-spending agenda. In fact, it is clear they envision a lot more of the same.

The administration's latest budget request is filled with burdensome new taxes and trillions in new spending. They want to see the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expire, which would mean more tax increases. And Democrats still have plenty of tax-and-spending ideas they would like to implement.

The American people have suffered enough. I don't want to think about what kind of economic pain we could see from another 4 years of Democrats' reckless spending. And I hope--I sincerely hope--that the American people will not have to experience it.

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