U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding inflation:
"Last week, President Biden spent part of his State of the Union address celebrating what he seemed to think was a victory over inflation.
"Yesterday, another wave of official figures confirmed what working families already knew:
"The President was wrong. The Democrats' football-spiking was premature. The American people are hurting badly.
"The CPI rose another half a point last month, even faster than predicted, for an overall price hike of 6.4% year on year.
"Mind you, that's not 6.4% inflation since President Biden was sworn in. That's an additional 6.4% just since February of last year — a baseline that already had an entire previous year of historic and unacceptable inflation baked into it.
"The overall Biden Inflation Rate is 14.4% from January 2021 to today.
"Rents are up 12.7% since President Biden took office. Grocery prices are up 19.6%. And energy prices are up 38% after two years of total Democrat control in Washington.
"Prices are still rising out of control, and even worse, the rate of increase is speeding back up again. This past month was the hottest for inflation since last October.
"We've now had 21 straight months above 5% annual inflation. A mind-boggling policy failure.
"And what does the White House have to say about it? Yesterday the President's press secretary proclaimed, 'the President's economic plan is indeed working.'
"So I guess the official White House position is that Democrats caused all this crushing inflation on purpose.
"This is the kind of insanity that has left just 16% of Americans saying they're in a better financial position than they were two years ago.
"That has nearly two-thirds of Americans saying they're living paycheck to paycheck.
"So much preventable pain — because Democrats gambled away families' financial security on their radical plans and reckless spending."
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