America's Economic Firestorm

Floor Speech

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Mr. ARRINGTON. Mr. Speaker, I can't for the life of me understand why my Democrat colleagues insist on passing this multitrillion-dollar monstrosity of a tax-and-spend bill that not only I, but the American people believe will be an economic and societal disaster on so many levels.

Mr. Speaker, the American people have spoken in countless polls and surveys and elections, not just in Virginia, New York, and New Jersey, but in my State of Texas where House seats have flipped from Democrat to Republican for the first time ever. As recent as last week, a Democrat changed parties to Republican because they cannot explain the current policies that are destructive to the ends of recovery and support the American people's freedom and our way of life.

They said as clearly as they can: No more Big Government control over our lives. That is what they said in Virginia. No more socialist spending our country into bankruptcy. No more growing the government at the expense of our freedoms and our children's future.

Mr. Speaker, Virginia, a blue State, one-third of the electorate said the economy was their number one issue. Biden won that by 10 points. They voted for a Republican Governor. Two-thirds of the American people in recent polls have said that the Biden economic plans are bad and they have no confidence in his policies. They connect his policies with the current economic conditions. The majority of Americans attribute the inflation to Biden's failed policies, just like they do the disastrous border and the debacle in Afghanistan and in the generic ballot. The generic ballot among registered voters, there is a 10-point spread, if the elections were held today, between Democrats and Republicans. That is the highest in 40 years ever recorded.

The American people are speaking and they are crying out to their country's leaders: Relent. Relent. But they have made the connection between the policies and the disastrous effects in their lives and in the life of their country.

Enhanced employment benefits, in other words, paying people more to be on unemployment than to be at work, coupled with wasteful partisan multitrillion-dollar spending packages under the guise of COVID relief have created an economic firestorm, runaway inflation.

Real wages, 7 of the 9 months this President has been in office, have gone down. Real wages have gone down. There has been an inflation surge to the point of double-digit inflation in the last month, which have put us, over the year, at a 30-year high.

Gas prices are up 50 percent. We are almost a million jobs short of what President Biden promised as a result of that blue State bailout that he called COVID relief. This is the solution that the Democrats are offering.

Let's raise prices even more and lower wages by taxing the American people.

Let's further extend our recession by chasing jobs overseas and putting the highest tax rates in the developed world on the job creators of the United States of America.

Let's burden small businesses with higher taxes and less people willing to work.

Let's drive labor participation further down by removing the work requirement.

Let's trap more people in poverty and the cycle of dependency on government by removing the incentives to work.

Let's wipe out 20 or 30 percent of the workforce by thrusting a Big Government mandate that is unconstitutional, overreaching, and would destroy any prospects for recovery.

Mr. Speaker, this was supposed to be about income inequality, but if you read the tax bill--and I don't know how my progressive colleagues can look the American people in the eyes with a straight face and say that this is not a swampy, special-interest package of the century, because they have tax breaks for the wealthy by raising the SALT deductions. They give tax breaks to green industry, to unions, to plaintiffs' attorneys, to media corporations. That is all legitimate. That is all true.

If you look close enough, that is what this is about. Not to mention they stuffed the stocking with early Christmas presents for progressives and political allies of the Democratic Party--amnesty for 8 million people while our southern border is melting down; unionization of every employee, every employer, every State in the country; Obamacare subsidies for people making hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Mr. Speaker, the list is too long. I implore my Democrat colleagues to relent and stop this. Let's get back to work on behalf of the American people.

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