WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Republican Conference Vice Chair Mike Johnson (R-La.), House Budget Committee Ranking Member Jason Smith (R-Mo.), House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Kay Granger (R-Texas), and Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas) at today’s leadership press stakeout to urge President Biden to abandon his reckless $5.5 trillion socialist grab bag reconciliation bill because it will raise taxes on hard-working American families and kill jobs. Whip Scalise slammed Democrats for their out-of-control spending, which has led to an unprecedented increase in inflation that has caused the price of everyday household items to skyrocket.
On the Biden Administration’s far-left, socialist policies causing inflation:
“This week, we’re going to see an epic battle play out between free-market capitalism and big-government socialism. That’s what’s at stake, and clearly, when you see Speaker Pelosi’s actions over these last few months, it’s been to massively grow the size of government to appease her radical socialist base. And I think you’re seeing the American people across the country express their anger and frustration because they’re paying the cost of it already with higher inflation.
“Inflation’s through the roof for so many things that people buy every day. Gasoline is up over 40 percent. When you go to the grocery store, you’re paying 30 or 40 percent more. If you want to buy a new appliance for your house, you’re going to wait months and months, and still, pay a higher cost for it.”
On President Biden breaking his pledge to not impact the paychecks of families making less than $400,000:
“So, President Biden has already broken his promise that his actions will not impact the paychecks of people making under $400,000 a year because the hardest-working Americans and the lowest-income Americans are the ones paying the biggest cost for the inflation already created by President Biden’s failed agenda. And now, they want to double down on it and put it on steroids. This would be inflation on steroids, tax increases like we’ve never seen before in the history of our country.”
On Democrats’ trillion-dollar tax-and-spending spree:
“The package that Speaker Pelosi is still trying to bring to the floor this week would be over $5.5 trillion of new taxes and spending, much of it added straight to the deficit, all under the name of leveling the playing field.”
On how Democrats’ natural gas tax will hurt middle class families:
“Tell that to hard-working families who are already paying too much in taxes, who know that, for example, President Biden’s energy tax in this bill, a tax on natural gas, is a new tax, it would hit the lowest income families the hardest. It would probably add about 14 percent to everybody’s household electricity bills if they use natural gas. That is a violation of President Biden’s promise to those workers, in many cases, who make less than $50,000 a year. They’re going to pay a higher cost for President Biden’s agenda. We actually tried to take that tax out of the bill. And on a party-line vote, every Democrat voted to continue charging new taxes to families on their electricity bills.”
On how President Biden’s far-left policies will raise healthcare costs:
“It would hit hospitals too, increasing the costs of health care. We tried to protect hospitals from having to pay these higher taxes, which will be passed on to families in the form of higher health costs, which, by the way, would be another violation of President Biden’s promises that your health care costs wouldn’t go up. Over and over again we’ve seen broken promises and the American people are fed up.”
On President Biden favoring the Green New Deal and the Chinese Communist Party:
“That’s why we are fighting against all of this radical socialist spending and these new taxes that are going to hurt families in America, that are going to be a gift to countries like China because if you think about it, you look at the Green New Deal policies that are in this radical spending bill, they exempt China from the major provisions of these bills. China is right now the country emitting the most new carbon. They’re opening up 300 coal plants this year.
“America was reducing carbon emissions through ingenuity. We were making more things in America. We were bringing jobs back to America. We were growing our middle class under President Trump. And we did that by lowering taxes, by having regulations that actually make sense, that don’t go out to pick winners and losers. And they want to reverse all of that and then exempt China.”
On President Biden’s Keystone pipeline hypocrisy:
“And President Biden has already shown he is willing to trade American jobs and give them away to foreign countries when he killed the Keystone pipeline on day one of his presidency. It’s one of the reasons Americans are paying 40 percent more for gasoline at the pump because President Biden is going after American energy but he hasn’t gone after all energy. He was just a few weeks ago begging OPEC and Russia to produce more oil at the same time that he blocked American companies from producing oil here at home where we actually have better environmental standards than in any OPEC country or in Russia. And yet, he greenlighted a pipeline so that Russia could create jobs in their country while killing jobs in the United States.”
On President Biden’s self-made crises:
“It’s catching up with the President. People are paying attention and people are fed up. They don’t want to pay for all of this big government socialism, and yet that’s where we are. That’s what’s going to play out this week. There is crisis after crisis that was created by President Biden. And he is the one that should step up and say enough is enough and start working with Republicans, start following through on his promise.”
On Democrats’ phony infrastructure package:
“Here in the House, Sam Graves, the Leader of the Transportation Committee, has been wanting to work on a bipartisan infrastructure bill, yet he has been shut out of the process from day one because they want to go forward with their go-it-alone bill.
“In their bill, by the way, they have [roughly] $100 billion in Solyndra-style slush funds. Slush funds are not infrastructure, yet that’s part of their new spending. That’s not where we need to be going. We should be focused on helping fight for those small businesses, for those families who are struggling. We should be focusing on lowering inflation, not spending trillions [of] more dollars in new taxes and new spending that will only increase inflation and hit the lowest-income families the hardest. So that’s what we’re going to be focused on this week. We’re going to continue fighting for those hard-working families and against this big government socialist agenda.”