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Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, as I traveled Iowa during this Easter recess, holding Q&A's in 25 counties, I ran into what I think all my colleagues do: concern about inflation.

We have to remember that inflation let loose by the reckless spending policies of the Biden administration has been proven to be anything but transitory. And that word ``transitory'' we heard so much during the previous administration.

Remember, it shot up to 9 percent. It is still not low enough. Inflation endures to this day, acting as a hidden tax on working-class Americans.

While inflation is well down from the 40-year high that we knew throughout history, that is of little comfort to working families struggling to make ends meet. In the first 6 months of this new administration, the Republican-led Congress acted early to shield Americans battling rising prices from the additional burden of a record tax hike that would have happened if we had not intervened.

The Working Families Tax Cut Act prevented the largest tax increase in our Nation's history. It also included additional working-class tax cuts. As a result, for working men and women, the average tax refund is up 11 percent over last year. Moreover, thanks to no tax on tips and overtime, workers keep more of their hard-earned dollars with each paycheck as the taxman takes less. This means Americans have more money in their pockets to provide for their families.

Still, much work remains to be done, and with other colleagues, we are addressing the rising cost of living. We are all working to lower costs on healthcare, food, gasoline, and housing, to name a few.

Congress recently passed reforms to rein in powerful drug middlemen called pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs for short. This will lower drug costs. Now, more needs to be done in the area of getting prescription drug costs down, but what we did about a month ago with PBMs, through more transparency, should lead to lower drug costs. But out of the bills I have introduced, there are still several more provisions dealing with pharmacy benefit managers that we need to pass.

I am also working to increase access to more affordable health insurance plans, increase competition and access to cheaper drugs, and establish healthcare price transparency, which works very well for consumers that want to look to the marketplace. There is a wide variety of prices for a lot of operations and a lot of other healthcare costs. If people would compare prices, it would save a lot of money.

Another area of focus for me is the cost of groceries. We can lower food costs by supporting American agriculture and passing a farm bill. Farmers have been hit by a sharp rise in costs to their inputs, which eventually the consumer pays for. Reducing these costs through transparency and competition on inputs, such as fertilizer, would also help ease food prices. In this area, I was happy to read that, finally, the Department of Justice is looking at anti-competition in agriculture, particularly in fertilizer and seed companies generally, not just seed corn.

A top priority of mine is enacting year-round E15 legislation. This policy would deliver lower prices at the gas pump and boost the farm economy. Anybody who believes that E15 won't reduce prices ought to check prices at the pumps in the eight States of the Midwest that have already received permission from the EPA for E15 year-round in those eight States. What we need to do is make sure it is, by law, year-round--E15 year-round--and nationwide.

At the top of the list of expenses for most families is housing. It used to be that the average first-time homeowner was 30 years old. Today, he or she is 41 years old. We have to get housing costs down for first-time homeowners.

The Senate has passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing legislation. This should increase the supply of affordable housing by cutting redtape and unlocking private capital.

Last but not least, affordability requires fiscal sanity. Fiscal recklessness by the Biden administration caused inflation, and fiscal restraint is the ultimate antidote. Last year's reconciliation bill took a step in the right direction by trimming $1 trillion in mandatory spending. Yet uncommonly high deficits and mounting debt continue to fuel inflation and put upward pressure on interest rates. To finally stamp out inflation, Congress must recommit to sound budgeting.

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