Political Quotes

“I come to the floor this evening to talk about the Democrats' latest reconciliation proposal. This is the tax-and-spend legislation you have probably heard about. It is called the Inflation Reduction Act, but don't be fooled by the name. It doesn't actually decrease the inflationary pressure we all feel at the gas pump, at the grocery store, clothes shopping. It actually makes it worse. Sadly, we have been down this road before. Early last year, the Democrats passed a massive $1.9 trillion package that was supposedly focused on COVID, but most of it had nothing to with COVID but provided a lot of stimulus. It was the largest spending package ever in the history of Congress, and, at the time it passed, a lot of us said: Wow, the economy coming out of that first stage of COVID is already picking up steam. In fact, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was telling us that, by midyear last year, we would be back to where we were prepandemic--pretty strong economic growth--and yet the Democrats were insisting on another $1.9 trillion, almost $2 trillion, of spending. Remember, we had just passed a $900 billion spending bill to help with COVID, which was bipartisan, by the way. I was part of putting that together. And so when it came to this new one, we said: Whoa, don't do this. It is going to overheat the economy, overstimulate the economy--particularly because inflation is about demand mismatching supply. And this is exactly what was happening.…”