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INFLATION CRISIS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Meuser) for 5 minutes.
Mr. MEUSER. Madam Speaker, I was in a grocery store on Sunday and nearly a dozen of my constituents stopped me and were very upset about product shortages and price increases.
According to the data, eggs are up 12 percent, bacon is up 20 percent, chicken is up 8 percent, gasoline is up 40 to 50 percent, hamburger and beef are running short. I can assure you, Madam Speaker, while these data points paint a picture, price increases are just simply much higher, and my constituents are feeling the effects in their family budgets.
An older gentleman with a half-full shopping cart that rang up for
$111 glanced up at me and said: This is ridiculous. There are people filling their gas tanks now--before it was $50, now it is $80, $90,
$100 to fill up a pickup truck because, Madam Speaker, the President and Members of this House--in fact, the leadership of this House--has decided to attack domestic energy production, which is clearly driving prices up through the roof.
With winter around the corner, it will cost 30 percent more to heat an average person's home. Yet, the Democrats are trying to implement a home heating tax--that is a wonderful idea--in the so-called Build Back Better bill that will drive energy bills even higher.
Madam Speaker, how is this helpful? How is it helpful to raise costs to tax our domestic energy while making it more competitive for Russia and Saudi Arabia and all the other places in the world to sell us their energy, so-called cheaper, when meanwhile a barrel of oil is over $80 a barrel. It makes no sense.
And the thing is this, the American people get this. The American people know it. They are paying the price for it. Members here will pay the price at the polls because this bill called Build Back Better is a disaster, Madam Speaker.
This is seventh grade economics. There is too much demand created by Big Government policies and not enough supply, not enough workers because we are providing far too much incentive for them not to work. Why would they, if they are making more not working? We are not doing anything to help our U.S. productivity to fulfill the demand that is being created by these Big Government policies.
All the while, foreign imports are pouring in and creating a bottleneck at our ports that we all see because we don't have the capacity, number one, to build in the USA to fulfill the demand; but number two, to unload the cargo ships and distribute the goods and then put them in trucks and ship them around the country.
So even the Treasury Secretary is warning Americans that inflation will be here throughout the next year, even though the President and others have said: Oh, no, this is just a passing problem. Nobody has to worry about it.
So what is the plan moving forward for the majority in this House, for the Democrats? They want to prime the demand side of the equation with a multi-trillion dollar spending bill known as Build Back Better, and we are hearing all these wonderful things about it.
Well, the problem is that all those wonderful things cost far too much and are completely unaffordable and aren't being paid for by the Members of this House; they are being paid for by my constituents who are going to be worse off because of it, and they also know that.
And not to mention, Madam Speaker, what about all the fraud? We don't hear much about that. Did you realize there was $87 billion in fraud due to the unemployment compensation that was just sprawled out to whoever asked with absolutely no work requirements at all, and none exist in this bill either.
We will be building back--not better--we will be building back in a manner that will be hurtful to my constituents and to my State and to our country.
Madam Speaker, the holidays are around the corner. Demand always increases in the holidays. So the situation is going to get further exacerbated, without a doubt. You don't need an economist to know that demand is going to continue to go up, supply will be minimal, inflation will rise due to the Build Back Better, which means there will be less workers. This is going to be the most expensive Christmas anyone can remember.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 188
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