The Economy

Floor Speech

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Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, moms and dads across America are having a little trouble sleeping these days. And when moms and dads in America lie down to sleep at night and they can't, they are worried. They are worried about things like the cost of living. They are worried about things like the cost of housing. They are worried about things like their insurance premiums going up. They are wondering if it is ever going to get any better. They are tired of having to pay more, live worse. They are worried that eventually they are going to have to sell blood to go to the grocery store.

Why are they feeling that? It is called inflation. And the inflation started under President Biden. As we know, it got to 9 percent. I won't go into the reasons why. We are doing better. We got it down to 3 percent. When you get inflation down from 9 percent to 3 percent, that is called disinflation.

What is disinflation? It just means disinflation is when the rate of inflation decreases, in this case from 9 percent to roughly 3 percent. Disinflation doesn't mean prices are going down. It just means that prices are rising less quickly. Under President Biden, they were rising at 9 percent. Now they are only rising at 3 percent.

In order for prices to actually go down, we would have to have deflation--not disinflation but deflation. We have to be careful what we wish for because deflation comes with some pretty severe consequences. We can get prices down through deflation, if we go into a recession, if you raise unemployment, allow unemployment to rise to about 8 or 9 percent where people lose their jobs. We are witnessing deflation right now in China. For kids in China who just got out of college, their unemployment rate is 25 percent. That is why their prices are going down.

There is a better way to help people deal with disinflation. That is to get their incomes up through tax reform, through regulatory reform, through designing a healthcare delivery system that looks like somebody designed the damn thing on purpose. And that is what we ought to be working on. If we--I don't have control of the floor. If I had control of the floor, I would be here every single day introducing bills. I see Senator Reed here. He would be doing the same thing, introducing bills to help the American people. But I don't have control of the floor.

I am not criticizing the people who do. That is above my pay grade. I am labor. They are management. But I know this, first, if we will ever get to do that, I will ask our Democratic friends to join with us. They may or may not. I don't know. But if they decline to join with us, then through reconciliation, which is how we passed the One Big Beautiful Bill, we can pass these measures to increase wages for the American people with a majority vote. We won't need Democratic votes. That is what we did with the One Big Beautiful Bill, and we can do it two more times before the midterm elections. We passed the One Big Beautiful Bill on July 1.

In the meantime, I am not saying we haven't been doing important things, but we haven't been working on a plan to help people deal with the cost of living, and we should be.

So I am going to end like I ended the last time. I am saying to the powers that be: Pretty please, with sugar on top--I will add a cherry. I have even got an old McDonald's McRib coupon somewhere, and I will throw that into the mix too. Please bring another reconciliation bill. Please. Let's deal with the problems that are causing moms and dads to lie awake when they lie down to sleep at night and can't.

I went on too long. I apologize to Senator Reed.

I yield to my friend Senator Reed from the wonderful State of Rhode Island.

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