Economic Recovery

Floor Speech

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Mr. TUBERVILLE. Madam President, I spoke recently about a serious crisis facing our economy, the workforce shortage. This has been brought on by many things that my colleagues from the left have spent and asked questions and brought about policies.

Today, I want to discuss another looming challenge to our economy, one where Democratic policies are adding fuel to the fire, if not starting the fire itself. I am talking about inflation.

Inflation is not an abstract idea thrown around by finance gurus. Inflation is a real threat to the pocketbooks of hard-working Americans throughout our great country. We haven't hit the inflation levels of Jimmy Carter's days yet, but the warning signs are here.

I recently spoke with a group of homebuilders from across my home State of Alabama. They told me how they are seeing prices increase that are even higher than the ballooning national average. As an example, in Alabama and across much of the South, homebuilding materials, such as brick, are up 10 percent. Insulation prices are up 15 percent. Sheetrock prices are up nearly 50 percent. Lumber prices are up 300 percent. And particle board prices, which are used in most homes across the country, the price is up almost 600 percent.

Although demand for houses went up during the height of the pandemic, the Commerce Department reported that U.S. homebuilding actually declined in April of this year. With the demand for housing so high right now, you would think new construction would be taking place everywhere you turn, but that is not the case. Builders are actually delaying construction projects because material prices have hit record highs. Prices are rising so rapidly that a project costing $300,000 at the beginning ends up costing more than $350,000 at the time of completion. This eats into builders' margins and discourages them from starting new projects, therefore, putting people out of work.

Folks back home can rest assured that I will be monitoring this closely. I will be listening to my constituents and other companies about their costs and supply chain experiences. But I shouldn't be the only one taking all these concerns into account. These price jumps should be concerning to all of us in this building because the national numbers don't paint a rosy picture.

In April, consumer prices jumped by 4.2 percent, the highest rise in over a decade. Energy prices went up 25 percent overall, with gas prices increasing nearly 50 percent. According to the Philadelphia Federal Reserve, price increases by one metric were the highest since 1980.

This level of inflation doesn't just affect a select few; it affects all American families. For many folks, a 4-percent hike on grocery bills takes a serious toll. Rising prices like these are the definition of a kitchen table issue. Paying 50 percent more for gas or having a costlier electric bill forces families to make a hard choice on what they can and cannot afford for that month.

We must get our fiscal house in order before inflation gets totally out of control and reverses the economic progress we made under President Trump's leadership.

You know there are different ways to combat inflation--a lot of different ways--but we know what makes inflation worse: massive government spending, and that is exactly what we are getting as we speak.

President Biden and congressional Democrats spent $1.9 trillion on a stimulus bill that flooded the economy with cash just 2 months ago. Think about that--1.9 trillion. Now we want to spend trillions on a package in disguise of an infrastructure bill. And they are following this up by trillions more to fund items on the progressive priority list in the future.

Well, they are being confronted by the old truth: There is no such thing as a free lunch. Simple economics show that when the supply of something goes up, the value goes down. Money is no different.

President Biden's policies are pumping our economy with money we simply don't have to spend, and that is the definition of inflation: making money lose its value. It is the natural result of the policies that we passed in this Chamber in the last few months.

That is why Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary and adviser to Presidents Clinton and Obama, warned that the Biden stimulus would be ``the least responsible macroeconomic policy we've had in the last 40 years.'' Remember, he worked for two Democratic Presidents. I couldn't agree more with Mr. Summers.

Democrats learned the wrong lesson from the financial crisis in 2008. They thought the recovery was slow because the government spent too little. They have been determined to spend much more this time around. The economic recovery from the pandemic was already well underway when the Democrats passed their massive stimulus in March--$1.9 trillion.

Thanks to the bipartisan emergency relief bills passed under President Trump, the economy had stabilized by yearend. We were in the middle of the most rapid economic recovery on record, but the Democrats' out-of-control spending is putting the recovery at risk, and it is the American families who will pay the price in the end.

In addition to a reckless monetary policy, they want to raise taxes on all of us, including small businesses and family farms, to fund this spending spree. They want to undo the Tax and Jobs Cuts Act passed by the Senate Republicans and signed into law by President Trump.

These Republican tax cuts helped create the best economy in a generation. They created countless opportunities for hard-working Americans. Unemployment was at historic lows. Blue-collar wages rose faster than white-collar wages for the first time in history.

If they repeal the Republican tax cuts, Democrats will be encouraging American companies to move overseas. Job creators will have to pay more taxes at the same time as they are recovering from the pandemic, and the tax increases being proposed will be passed on to working Americans in the form of higher prices and lower wages.

In fact, the only people Democrats want to lower taxes for are the people who are high earners in New York, California, and New Jersey. Higher taxes, combined with the Democrats' inflation, would be a one- two knockout punch of our Nation's economic recovery.

It only takes one match to start a brush fire. Rather than taking commonsense steps to fight inflation, Democrats are preparing for it by dumping lighter fluid on the entire field. President Biden styles himself as the second coming of FDR, but he is looking more like Jimmy Carter every day.

Americans my age will remember Carter's Presidency and how tough those times were for working families. I hope we can avoid repeating history, but that means we need to take action, and we need to take action now. I urge my Democratic colleagues to reexamine their misplaced priorities and keep pro-worker tax and spending policies in place.

Let's work together on practical ways to get our economy and our country back to work.

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