WASHINGTON – On Wednesday, U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.) spoke on the Senate floor to criticize the misguided policies in Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reckless tax-and-spend spree. Blunt slammed Democrats’ decision to press ahead with their massive, partisan spending at a time when Americans are facing skyrocketing inflation and businesses are struggling to find workers.
Blunt noted that businesses are trying to keep up with customer demand, but worker shortages have forced many of them to cut their hours or limit their services, which is disrupting the supply chain and stifling our economic recovery.
CLICK HERE to Watch Blunt’s Remarks
Following Are Excerpts of Blunt’s Remarks:
“Madam President, in just a few short months this year, we’ve seen a long list of problems develop in the country. Some of them my good friend, the senator from West Virginia, just talked about.
“But they range from inflation and debt to the hiring crisis to major disruptions in the supply chain. When I was home in Missouri last week meeting with all kinds of employers and all kinds of businesses, big and small, everybody, [said] ‘we can’t find workers. We can’t get the supplies we need, and we can’t keep up with inflation.’
“What’s astonishing to me is that Democrats continue to move forward with their $3.5 trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree. And you know, it’s easy to take that number and just reduce the length of time you’re going to try out all these new policies. And we’re going to have to talk about that because that’s going to be a big mistake.
“In fact, the $3.5 trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree, I think, easily if you extend all of the policies through the whole 10 years, becomes a $5 trillion reckless tax-and-spending spree. If you reduce the policies, it’s pretty easy to get it to $2 trillion.
“But if you reduce the policies by just saying, ‘instead of 10 years, we’re going to have this policy for three years. Instead of five years, we’re going to have this policy for one year,’ all you’ve done is put future Congresses in a place where, frankly, Democrats would hope they can’t say no. After a year of the program, they can’t say no to the second year of the program, or after three years of the program, they can’t say no. I wouldn’t take a whole lot of solace in the idea that we’re going to reduce the number unless we look at the policies behind the number. …
Some of our colleagues have really raised some important questions. For instance, one senator said recently that expanding social programs while ignoringthe millions of open jobs—this is that senator’s quote, ‘will only feed a dysfunction that could weaken our economic recovery.’
“And, of course, that’s exactly right. Businesses across the country are trying to hire workers for the more than 10 million job openings. Half the small businesses say they have jobs that they struggle to fill, one-half of all small businesses.
“I was in Farmington, Missouri, one day last week, and somebody at that roundtable said, ‘I used to say we need to do whatever it takes to get skilled labor.’ And then occasionally, I would say, ‘we need to do whatever it takes to get part-time labor.’ Now I’m saying, ‘we need to do whatever it takes to get labor,’ because they can’t fill the jobs they have. What I was hearing all over our state, and I think every senator in this body is hearing the same thing, which is that people can’t find the people they need to do the work. …
“Another Democratic senator pointed out the danger of all this extra … government spending the president wants is going to really drive up inflation. And that’s also correct. You can’t put hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy and not have that drive up inflation. If people have money that they wouldn’t have otherwise—particularly money we had to borrow to get there or money we had to take out of the functioning economy to get there—that money gets spent but not in the way that you’d want it to be spent to grow an economy and do the best things for individuals and families.
“The big spending spree really began in March with a partisan, a totally partisan, one side of the aisle only, $2 trillion so-called ‘COVID-19 relief’ law. But frankly, it was a recovery plan when a recovery was well underway. I think the recovery plan slowed down the recovery, made it less likely that people would get back to work.
“It made it more likely that people would have money to spend that they wouldn’t have otherwise and drive inflation. The expert opinion of economists on both sides of the aisle who said that what was done in March of this year would assure inflation would rise. It’s exactly the same thing they’re saying about the bill that’s being debated right now. It’s already happened, and it is happening.
“Americans are paying more for everything from groceries to gasoline to a big purchase like a new car or even a used car is selling at a new sudden premium. Consumer prices have jumped 5.4 percent from one year ago. That’s not the kind of thing that does anything to help families. In fact, according to Moody’s Analytics, a family earning an average income of about $70,000 is spending an extra $175 a month on food, fuel, and housing because of what that article referred to as ‘President Biden’s inflation.’ …
“At one point, one of our friends on the other side of the aisle expressed his opinion, as he put it, that, ‘any expansion of social programs must be targeted to those in need and not expanded beyond what is fiscally possible.’
“That’s, of course, the right position. All of us want to help people in need, but we don’t want to expand that group beyond what you can fiscally deal with and not harm their own opportunities in the economy. …
“Also talking about tuition-free community college. … “I’m a big supporter of Pell Grants. I worked a few years ago to go back to where we have year-round Pell Grants. So if you’re going to school and something’s working for you, you can stay in school. You don’t have to take a summer off and get a different job and then think you’re coming back in the fall to find out that that just didn’t work out. We have solved this problem. If we haven’t solved it adequately, let’s increase the Pell Grant amount. And if that doesn’t do the job, why don’t we increase the amount of family income you can have and still qualify for the maximum Pell Grant or some other portion of the Pell Grant?
“There’s an obvious solution here. Matter of fact, in the markup of the Labor/HHS bill, I think we added $400 to the annual Pell Grant this year, which is a pretty substantial increase in that grant. The government already spends more than $28 billion every year for Pell Grants.
“Finally, obviously a lot of emphasis and unease on these tax increases. One of my colleagues on the other side said our tax code, ‘should not weaken our global competitiveness or the ability of millions of small businesses to compete.’ That’s undeniably true.
“The 2017 Republican-led tax law followed a consensus that we need to bring the U.S. in line with our global competitors. Let’s not get out of line and make it harder for us to compete. We were on an incredible trajectory of job creation and pay for all of the working-class families that had been left out of the system for too long. We could easily wipe out those gains with a corporate tax rate increase that loses our competitive advantage to people that we don’t want to lose it to.
“Democrats are also aiming several of their tax hikes at small businesses and family farms. They plan to hike, we hear, those taxes by 57 percent at the top marginal rate from 29.6 percent to 46.4 percent.
“There are a lot of concerns with the legislation that President Biden and his allies in Congress are trying to push through. The American economy is struggling against the headwinds that, frankly, the administration has done so much to create on its own. This terrible legislation would just make everything worse. …
“Let’s see what we can do to work together to make everything better. And with that, Mr. President, I would yield back.”