{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=53653E40-F18B-45A1-BD5F-704BAD36DD2E", "Thune: Democrats Ignore Rising Inflation, South Dakota Families Pay the Price", "2021-10-20", "2021", "2021-10", "Republican", "Senate", "SD", "John Thune", "T000250", "www.thune.senate.gov", "thune", "https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases", "scraper", "U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) today called out Democrats for blatantly ignoring the growing inflation crisis and noted the tone-deaf messaging coming out of the White House. Thune also highlighted the Biden administration\u2019s failures in addressing multiple crises that are impacting families in South Dakota every day.\n\nThune\u2019s remarks below (as prepared for delivery):\n\n\u201cMr. President, last week President Biden\u2019s chief of staff retweeted a tweet from Harvard economist Jason Furman describing our current economic challenges \u2013 notably the growing inflation crisis and supply chain issues \u2013 as \u2018high class problems.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018High class problems.\u2019\n\n\u201cI guess working Americans struggling to stretch their paychecks to cover increases in the price of everything from groceries to gas can comfort themselves with the knowledge that they\u2019re experiencing \u2018high class problems.\u2019\n\n\u201cMr. President, the White House chief of staff\u2019s tone-deaf tweet was unfortunately pretty typical of a White House that seems eager to minimize \u2013 or disclaim responsibility for \u2013 most of the problems occurring on its watch, whether it\u2019s the flood of illegal immigration across our southern border or the high prices Americans are currently facing.\n\n\u201cBut as the White House chief of staff \u2013 and the president \u2013 should know, inflation has become a serious problem for working Americans.\n\n\u201cInflation, of course, hits middle- and lower-income families hard.\n\n\u201cIf you\u2019re wealthy, price increases may be an annoyance, but they\u2019re not likely to break your budget.\n\n\u201cIf you\u2019re living paycheck to paycheck, on the other hand, price increases may mean the difference between making it to the next paycheck or running out of money mid-month.\n\n\u201cCurrently, Mr. President, inflation is costing a typical household $175 a month, according to Moody\u2019s Analytics.\n\n\u201cThat may not sound like much to a wealthy Democrat politician, but for an ordinary American family, it\u2019s a lot of money.\n\n\u201c$175 a month may be the difference between whether or not parents can afford to get braces for their daughter.\n\n\u201cIt may be the difference between going to visit family for Christmas, or staying home and not seeing them.\n\n\u201cIt may be the difference between having money for the extras \u2013 family dinners at a restaurant, or Little League fees, or ballet lessons \u2013 or just being able to cover the bare necessities.\n\n\u201cAnd for families making less than the median U.S. income, $100 or more a month can be the difference between making it to the next paycheck, or running out of money.\n\n\u201cIt can mean the difference between paying the heating bill, or going cold during the winter.\n\n\u201cMr. President, Americans have seen increases in food prices.\n\n\u201cIn the price of bacon.\n\n\u201cOf beef.\n\n\u201cPoultry.\n\n\u201cPork.\n\n\u201cPeanut butter.\n\n\u201cFruits and vegetables.\n\n\u201cEggs.\n\n\u201cThe list goes on.\n\n\u201cThe price of children\u2019s shoes is up.\n\n\u201cSo is the price of furniture.\n\n\u201cAnd gas.\n\n\u201cAnd electricity.\n\n\u201cAnd rent.\n\n\u201cA recent AP article entitled \u2018Winter heating bills set to jump as inflation hits home\u2019 noted, and I quote, \u2018the U.S. government said \u2026 it expects households to see their heating bills jump as much as 54% compared to last winter.\u2019\n\n\u201c54 percent.\n\n\u201cShow me the working family that can easily absorb that increase.\n\n\u201cMr. President, inflation happens when you have too many dollars chasing too few goods.\n\n\u201cAnd Democrats helped trigger our inflation situation earlier this year when they decided to pour a lot of unnecessary government money into the economy \u2013 despite being warned that their partisan $1.9 trillion spending bill could stoke inflation.\n\n\u201cNow, with inflation clearly becoming a long-term problem, Democrats are preparing to double down on the government spending with a massive $3.5 trillion tax-and-spending bill filled with priorities like $200 million for a park in Speaker Pelosi\u2019s district \u2013 a park that already features luxury housing and a golf course \u2013 and billions of dollars for a Civilian Climate Corps to provide government jobs for climate activists.\n\n\u201cThe massive government spending this bill would authorize would pretty much guarantee that our country would be left with an even more persistent and widespread inflation problem.\n\n\u201cAnd flooding the economy with government dollars isn\u2019t even the only way the bill would contribute to inflation.\n\n\u201cThe bill also contains big tax hikes on businesses, which are already raising prices thanks to the higher cost of shipping and materials \u2013 and the challenges of hiring an adequate workforce.\n\n\u201cRaising taxes on these businesses could result in even higher consumer prices, and/or reductions in the quality of the services provided to consumers.\n\n\u201cMr. President, government revenue for fiscal year 2021 saw a huge increase, driven in large part by tax receipts from corporations and well-off Americans \u2013 yes, the same companies and individuals that Democrats like to accuse of not paying their fair share.\n\n\u201cBut since Democrats\u2019 appetite for government spending is apparently insatiable, record-high government revenues don\u2019t look likely to stop them from passing their huge tax increases, and driving up prices for consumers even further.\n\n\u201cMr. President, along with the flood of government spending Democrats passed in the spring, another major contributor to our inflation crisis has been supply chain bottlenecks.\n\n\u201cAnd the White House has largely failed to do anything to address the problem.\n\n\u201cThe president finally took one step forward when he announced the other day that the port of Los Angeles will join the port of Long Beach in operating 24/7.\n\n\u201cWell, it\u2019s about time.\n\n\u201cMajor ports around the globe already operate around the clock.\n\n\u201cBut here in the United States, unions have largely stood in the way of round-the-clock operations.\n\n\u201cAnd even now, the port of Los Angeles-Long Beach will not be fully 24/7 for a while.\n\n\u201cOnly one of the container terminals is currently open around the clock, and then only for part of the week.\n\n\u201cThe others are only slowly moving toward 24-hour operations, with no deadline in sight.\n\n\u201cOther than moving toward 24/7 operations in Los Angeles, however, the president is doing almost nothing to address the supply chain bottleneck.\n\n\u201cInfrastructure upgrades for ports, trucking, and rail are stuck in limbo while Democrats debate their $3.5 trillion tax-and-spending spree.\n\n\u201cAnd while the president\u2019s transportation secretary has talked about loosening trucking regulations, his department is actually pursuing an aggressive regulatory agenda that is likely to make transporting goods around this country more, not less, difficult.\n\n\u201cAnd I don\u2019t even want to think about the transportation challenges that are likely to result from the government mandates and regulations that will emerge from Democrats\u2019 tax-and-spending spree.\n\n\u201cMr. President, it\u2019s unfortunate that Democrat elites can\u2019t seem to grasp that inflation is a serious problem for working families \u2013 and that the solution to our inflation problem is not flooding the economy with even more government money.\n\n\u201cIf Democrats succeed in passing their reckless tax-and-spending spree, high inflation may be the order of the day for many, many days to come.\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s hope that Democrats think better of their spending plans before American families end up paying the price.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:24:51Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=53653E40-F18B-45A1-BD5F-704BAD36DD2E"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.6659107748419046, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}