The Economy

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, like all of us, I just got back from spending some time at home. I got back from being there and making a difference. I think one of the important things of being outside of Washington is you get a chance to hear what people are really concerned about. We have all kinds of speeches given here every day of what Members of Congress are absolutely sure people are concerned about. I think that topic becomes much more crystal clear when you get home. I know it is certainly much more crystal clear to me when I am home in Missouri.

Over the Fourth of July holiday, there were a number of visits all over the State--to Columbia, St. Louis, Montgomery City, Monroe City. There were lots of events everywhere in the State at which I talked about the importance of getting the vaccine and the progress we were making there, but the first thing that people wanted to talk to me about was inflation. People are already seeing that prices are well above the numbers that they believe they are seeing that the official numbers are confirming.

In May of this year, prices were 5 percent higher than they were in May a year ago. In June, they were 5.4 percent higher than they were a year ago, but people are seeing a lot of prices that are higher than that. The price of whole milk is up 7.5 percent from a year ago. The price of an airplane ticket has averaged up about 25 percent from a year ago. Used cars are more expensive than they were last June. In fact, they are 45 percent more expensive than they were a year ago in June.

There is an incredible increase in the cost of things that people not only want to buy but on those things that are more pressing: what people have to buy and need to buy.

A lot of people specifically talked to me about gas prices. I was on the road a lot, driving a lot while I was home, and I saw those prices for myself. The average cost of a gallon of regular gasoline nationwide is about $3.15. That is 45 percent higher than in June of last year. That is a hidden tax that working people pay every day.

Whether it is a hidden tax on a glass of milk, a hidden tax on a tank of gas, or a hidden tax on other things that they like to do or have to do, it makes a real difference for the people who want to take a vacation or have to travel to work. In the part of Missouri that I live in, there are a lot of little towns that have manufacturing jobs. It is not unusual for somebody to drive 40 or 50 miles one way to get to that job, and if gasoline is 45 percent higher than it was a year ago, it makes a real difference. That is a real hidden tax, and it is usually a hidden tax on the people to whom the President rightly would not want to pass on tax increases.

I think the administration has to start taking into account the issues that are out there. Larry Summers and others from the Obama administration have warned of the great risk of inflation. When we talk about energy, for instance, I think we have to do that, clearly, in a way that, if we are making transitions to energy, we don't make those transitions in a way that needlessly have a negative impact on families and on opportunities.

In his first few days in office, President Biden rescinded the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, and not too long after that, he blocked the new oil and gas leases in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. These were things that Congress had talked about for a long time and, in some cases, were things Congress had specifically decided were timely to do, but an Executive order from the President decided, no, we are going to head in a different direction.

That was just the beginning, really, of what my colleagues have seen in the discussion in Congress and what my Democratic colleagues in Congress have in mind. So, if you like paying higher prices for gasoline, you are going to love what happens to the restrictions that go into effect and drive prices of all energy even higher.

The other thing I talked to small business owners about and, frankly, to all business owners about was the trouble in finding enough workers. Republican Governors in 25 States have now determined that the larger unemployment benefit kept people from going back to work. People were choosing to stay on the sidelines rather than go to work. Frankly, if you looked at that $618 weekly unemployment check that was the average in America in May, that unemployment check didn't have any childcare costs associated with it, and it didn't have any travel to work associated with it. You have to have a job that pays a lot to not consider, if I am continuing to get this check, why should I go back to work?

Missouri was one of the 25 States that decided that the extra bonus was not only bad for families in their not going back to work but that it was bad for our economy. So, as of June 12, the return to the important but much lower normal unemployment benefit happened in our State, and I think you can already see people making the decision that it is time to go back to work.

Surprisingly, even though we have created a lot of opportunities for people to stay home, the June economy created 850,000 new jobs, and we should all feel good about that, but if this is an economy that has created 850,000 new jobs, at some point, we have to stop pushing money into that economy that we don't have. There are, obviously, a lot of factors at play here, but the 850,000 people going back to work is an important and a significant thing.

Part of the explanation, obviously, is the rush by Republican Governors, principally, to eliminate that bonus, but part of it is just simply an economy that is already beginning to rebound--to rebound based on the current tax structure and rebound based on what governments already spend rather than this incredible rush to drive inflation even further.

The Congressional Budget Office put out a new report recently that read the Federal deficit for this fiscal year will be more than $3 trillion. The problem is that nobody has any idea what $3 trillion really is, and that probably includes most of us. If I said the deficit was $3 million or $300,000, somehow divided up to every American family, we would immediately think: Oh, my goodness. We could never deal with that.

By the way, it was just announced that there is a budget agreement on top of that $3 trillion deficit to spend another $3.5 trillion.

It is time we started talking frankly about how much $3 trillion really is. That $3 trillion is something that somebody has to pay back sometime. All that borrowing and spending has been one of the big factors contributing to inflation. It doesn't even count the $3.5 trillion, again, that had been added just overnight in that discussion.

Some people are beginning to call this Bidenomics. I think Congress has to take its share of responsibility here. The belief that we can spend without limit and that it won't cause any problems is outrageous. The idea that we can pay people not to work or pay them more than they would make if they did work is outrageous. All of these things lead to unintended consequences. There is a belief that high gas prices and inflation are just temporary and that people shouldn't be concerned about it. Well, people are concerned, and they should be concerned.

I hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will spend some time listening to people, hearing their concerns.

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