Lankford: Biden’s Record-high Inflation Will Cost Oklahoma Families $7,198 More This Year

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on YouTube.

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on Rumble.

WASHINGTON, DC –Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today called out the Biden Administration and Democrat policies for today’s updated inflation rate of 9.1 percent, a new 40-year high, as well as record-high gas and food prices Oklahomans are paying. At a Senate Republican press conference today, Lankford discussed how alike the events unfolding today, including President Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia to beg them for oil, are to almost exactly what President Carter did 40 years ago. Lankford said the Democrats’ bad policies are now being made even worse by their proposals to increase taxes on Americans.

Lankford continually pushes back on overspending, recently calling on his congressional colleagues to combat inflation by decreasing spending. Lankford has remained outspoken against the trillions of federal funds spent in the name of “COVID relief” and has called for more transparency into government spending through his Taxpayer’s Right-to-Know Act that became law last year. Lankford fought for this legislation since 2011, to ensure completion of a functional federal program inventory that can be used as a tool for oversight of federal spending; to highlight good stewardship of tax dollars; and to provide greater transparency of duplication, inefficiency, and waste.

Transcript

This past weekend, I was sitting in my living room for a moment, and I was going through a box that my mom had actually packed almost 50 years ago, I guess now. I was going through this box, and in this box she had random items that were in it, and one of them was a newspaper actually from the late 1970s. So as I’m going through this box of some things that are 60 years old, some things 50 years old, I run into this on that’s just over 40 years old. And as I pull out this newspaper, I start just flipping through it to see what were the stories at the time. And one of the stories there was about Jimmy Carter, meeting with the Saudis to talk about them increasing oil production to try to bring down the price of oil and increase access in the United States.

And as I read that story, all I could think is: history is repeating itself. Literally on the weekend before I’m watching Joe Biden travel to Saudi Arabia to go meet with them about increasing oil production and to try to bring down prices in America, I’m reading a story of Jimmy Carter doing the exact same thing in the 1970s. This is the Biden economy. This economy that we have right now of 9.1 percent inflation is directly tied to the Democrat policies and the things that they have passed in the past year that have dramatically increased the prices on Americans. While they talk about their benevolence—they’re going to go ‘help’ everyone—they’re actually pushing prices up on everyone right now. And we continue to deal with energy issues now, just like we did during the Carter Administration then.

These are policy decisions that have been made that are affecting people in my neighborhood, in my state, in my county, and the cities in my state.

The newest estimate for Oklahoma is each family is paying $7,198 more this year for the exact same products they were buying last year–$7,198.

Wages have not gone up for families in my state $7,198. They’re falling farther and farther behind directly because of the policies that have been put in place by this Administration. And now to answer that. This Administration’s saying, ‘Our solution to inflation is going to be: increase taxes.’ But their confidence is, ‘Well we’re only going to increase taxes on some Americans.’ Listen, if you’re a business, and you’re dealing with nine percent inflation, and then you’re also tacked on, let’s say, a 3.8 percent tax, where does that go? It goes to higher prices. And it literally drives the inflation even higher. So their quote-unquote ‘solution’ for inflation of raising taxes is actually going to increase prices once again.

They’re literally working to make a bad situation worse.

We have got to get them to stop the federal spending and stop proposing raising all these new taxes on it to try to get a handle on what’s happening on inflation because it’s literally choking out the people in my state as they fall farther and farther behind. And the bad news of this—if there can be one that makes it even worse—is that I was at this same podium months ago and was talking about inflation in America, how much higher it is than most of the rest of the world—that’s not true anymore.

Because of the United States’ inflation, what’s happening here, prices go up around the world as well that’s catching up. So what the Biden policies have done and what my Democratic colleagues have done here in the United States is not just hurting Oklahoma consumers and American consumers, it is now a worldwide issue that we’re dealing with as well.

 We have got to turn this around.

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