Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. I, obviously, anticipated that question. I thought about it, and I want to say to the Members my thoughts that I, frankly, talk about all over the country. We passed a number of bills. Inflation is hurting our people. Inflation was not caused by President Biden or this Congress. Inflation was caused by the pandemic. Inflation hurt businesses severely and hurt employees severely. In a bipartisan way, we voted as that pandemic started. As we saw the broad impacts of that, we, in a bipartisan fashion, stepped in to help. It made a very big difference. I start that way because the representation of some is that somehow we, by passing legislation, have caused this inflation. The OECD nations, the economically developed countries of the world, have all had inflation. As a matter of fact, the average OECD nation has a 10.2 percent inflation rate. As the gentleman knows, ours is 8.3 percent. Mexico didn't have any of the bills that we passed and had an 8.7 inflation rate. The Netherlands that didn't have an American Rescue Plan has a 13.6 percent rate of inflation. Sweden, a small and very successful country, didn't have an American Rescue Plan and has an inflation rate of 9.8 percent; Austria, another strong economic country, 9.3 percent; Denmark, the country of my father's birth, 8.9 percent. And you say: So what? The ``so what'' is that we have seen a global inflation.…”