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“THE ECONOMY” mentioning Mitch McConnell was published in the Senate section on page S4837 on July 13.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE ECONOMY
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, now on a totally different matter, Senators have just spent 2 weeks traveling our home States and hearing what is on the minds of working families. I got to spend time with all kinds of hard-working Kentuckians across the Bluegrass.
There is no question we are in better shape than we were a year ago. Thanks to the genius of science, the success of Operation Warp Speed, and the bipartisan rescue packages the Republican-led Senate passed in 2020, the year 2021 was primed and set up for a historic American comeback well before the new Democratic Congress or the new Democratic administration was even sworn in.
But Democrats still wanted to rush ahead with the huge borrowing and spending sprees they had promised their far left. Top economists, including famous Democrats, warned our colleagues to think again. Even liberal experts tried to warn our colleagues that the socialist ideas they had drawn up in 2020 were not suited to what Americans needed in 2021. Overspending and overborrowing would unleash inflation, slow rehiring, and hurt small businesses.
All that was predicted, but Democrats rushed ahead. They rammed through what the White House bragged was the most leftwing legislation in our Nation's history, and now Democrats want to follow up with an even more absurd summer sequel.
Well, let me tell you, I just spent 2 weeks hearing from my fellow Kentuckians, and they are already paying a heavy price. Manufacturers are still absolutely hammered by supply chain shocks. Employers large and small say Democrats' special bonus for workers to stay unemployed is badly hampering their ability to fully reopen and to serve their customers. Most of our surrounding States have already put a stop to this awful idea, but Kentucky's Governor, regretfully, hasn't.
It isn't just for-profit businesses, either, that are having trouble getting people back to work. I heard from one residential treatment center for pregnant women and new moms grappling with substance abuse. They said that because of the generous Federal bonus for staying home, they have had trouble finding enough support staff to even reopen one of their facilities post-COVID. About 80 percent of the people who schedule an interview don't even show up.
These backward bonuses have also invited heaps--heaps--of fraud. In California, for example, a significant share of the State's COVID unemployment benefits were paid out fraudulently, billions and billions of dollars to people who shouldn't have gotten them at all. And now--
get this--Democrats want to give the California labor secretary who was in charge of that nightmare a promotion. In fact, we are scheduled to vote on her confirmation today to a leading position at the Department of Labor. You really can't make this stuff up.
And then there is inflation. Just this morning, we learned that runaway inflation has continued to hit working families and hit them hard. Consumer prices spiked in June considerably more than had been forecast. Inflation is up 5.4 percent year over year--the fastest jump in 13 years. Stunningly, it is up 0.9 percent just month over month. Families are feeling it everywhere, from the supermarket to the gas pumps, to housing, to the used car lot, and beyond--all thanks in part to the Democrats' half-baked spending spree from the springtime. Now they want an even more absurd, even more damaging summer sequel.
What Democrats say they want to force through this summer through reconciliation would make our current inflationary mess look like small potatoes. Nobody seriously thinks our country needs another gigantic overdose of overborrowing, overspending, and overtaxing.
This isn't what the American people voted for, either. Our distinguished colleague, the junior Senator from Vermont, the chair of the Budget Committee, has been very transparent about his socialist ideology for decades, very upfront about it, but the country didn't elect a 50-50 Senate and a President who claimed to be a moderate so that Chairman Sanders could turn America into a socialist country.
Working Americans know that is not what they voted for. This summer they will see who wants to borrow and spend trillions more dollars for no reason and who would rather help them get their jobs back, their stable prices back, their small businesses back, and their lives back
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