War Powers Resolution
Floor Speech
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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I want to thank Senator Schiff for bringing another War Powers Resolution before this body. I have lost count on how many votes we have had, but we are doing this for one reason and one reason only: The Republican majority refuses to do its constitutional and statutory responsibility.
The Constitution says we declare war. The President doesn't get to make war without the consent of Congress, and our Founders were very intentional, investing that power in us. They did not want an unchecked, runaway Executive being able to make war overseas without the consent of the people.
And I hear in Senator Van Hollen's voice his anger. I think we all are angry that our colleagues are not allowing this body to do its job, but we are also angry that the cost of this war is not being borne by Members of the U.S. Senate, is not being borne by Donald Trump's billionaire and corporate friends; the cost of this war is being borne by American consumers, by American small businesses, by American farmers.
And so I just want to spend my few minutes updating you on what the state of the American economy and what the state of the global economy--inextricably linked to the American economy--is today, 60 days after this illegal war began.
The scoreboard is gas prices. Americans today are paying, on average, about $4.30 a gallon. Gas prices are up 20 to 30 percent from the beginning of the war. The price of Brent crude is now over $120 a barrel compared to $70 before the war.
The only reason the gas prices have gone up by 20 to 30 percent is the war. That is the only reason that Americans are paying those extraordinary amounts at the pump.
And let's put this in real terms. If you are a commuter in this country who has a longer than average commute, you are probably buying somewhere short of a thousand gallons a year in auto fuel. And so when the price jumps by $1--and it may soon jump by $2--that is $1,000 to $2,000 out of your pocket.
Forty percent of American families are living paycheck to paycheck. Forty percent of American families have less than $400 in the bank in liquid assets ready to spend on an emergency like a car repair or an emergency medical bill. And so when you are spending a thousand dollars more every year just to fill up your tank, you go from being on the brink of financial crisis into financial crisis.
And, again, this isn't bad luck. This isn't a natural disaster. Donald Trump chose to increase gas prices in this country to $4.30 a gallon. Diesel prices are up even more. Diesel prices are up 50 percent. This is the fuel that America's farmers and America's trucking industry uses. And our farmers were already dealing with the consequences of tariffs. Seventy percent of farmers right now in this country say that they will not have enough money in order to plant the next crop because the tariffs and the diesel prices are putting many of them out of business. Bankruptcies of farms are up almost 50 percent from before when Trump was President.
Inflation was 2.8 percent before the war, well above the Federal Reserve's target. It is now 3.5 percent. That is an extraordinary increase, largely driven by fuel costs, but the cost of everything else--cost increases for everything else are coming very soon as well.
Airfare prices, up by 25 percent. So if you are online right now looking to book a ticket for your family's vacation, if you are planning far ahead and booking tickets for Thanksgiving or Christmas, you are paying 25 percent more than you would have paid before the war. Reason for higher airline prices? The war.
But this crisis is spiraling around the world because oil, $120 a barrel, is what fuels our fabrics and clothing industry globally. So the cost of polyester and nylon is going up and up and up. And so in the sewing hubs of Bangladesh and other countries that send products to Walmart, where a lot of Americans buy their clothes, we are starting to see production interruptions because of the high price--increasingly high price--of the components of fabrics.
In Singapore and Taiwan, it is becoming more expensive for companies to produce medical devices like syringes and catheters because of the high, increasing price of plastic. Aluminum prices have been rising ever since the war in the Middle East started because of attacks on aluminum smelters in Iran and other Gulf countries. Helium, a product that is produced in the Middle East, the price is going through the roof, and so the semiconductor manufacturing industry globally is facing shortages because helium is an important product for semiconductors.
So it is not just gas prices. You are about to see a spike in the cost of technological products, automobiles, fabrics, clothing, medical devices. Everything is getting more expensive because of one person's insane decision. No President, Republican or Democrat, prior to Donald Trump made the decision to invade Iran, to launch a full-scale war against Iran, because they were told the consequence of doing that is the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and there is no military response by the United States that will reopen the strait.
And so every President prior to Donald Trump, whether they were Republican or Democrat, decided not to wage a full-scale war on Iran because they knew one of the consequences would be the meltdown of the American economy and the meltdown of the global economy. And it would not be billionaires and big corporations that would pay the price. It would be regular Americans, regular minimum-wage Americans, middle- class Americans who would pay that price.
And so as we head into the summer and the price of everything for American consumers gets higher and higher--their summer travel, their plane tickets, their clothing, their groceries--there is only one person to blame: Donald Trump. And there is only one party to blame: the Republican Party, which could choose to join us and vote for one of these resolutions to end the war, to allow us to get back to a point where prices are coming down instead of spiraling upward. This is a choice that our Senate Republican colleagues make every week, to vote for continuing this war and for continuing this disastrous price escalation on ordinary Americans.
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