Unanimous Consent Request--S. Res. 185

Floor Speech

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Mr. BROWN. Madam President, reserving the right to object, no serious economists across the ideological spectrum are concerned about inflation right now. No one is hiding information at the White House.

I am in meetings all the time with White House officials talking about this package. No one believes--first of all, no one is hiding information. No one believes what the Senator, the junior Senator from Florida, is saying about this.

Perhaps some millionaire Senators want to make this into an issue, and I hear that over and over and over, but I talk to people like Jay Powell, Chair of the Federal Reserve, nominated by President Trump for that position. He, of course, keeps his eye on these kinds of things, but he has expressed no strong concern about inflation.

And we even know that when some experts have been concerned, they have been wrong. We saw what happened in 2008 after too many elites worried about inflation. What we really needed was to increase wages and get people back to work. The result from 2008 was a recovery that was too slow for most people, while so many of these big costs continued to rise.

Our economy looks a whole lot better today than it did last year, but we can't compare where we are today with where we were last year. We were on the brink of a once-in-a-generation health and economic crisis at this time last year. Millions of people, mostly low-wage workers, lost their jobs. Our economy ground to a halt as we tried to stop the spread of the virus.

This year, we have made good progress with the American Rescue Plan, as the Presiding Officer from Wisconsin knows, getting shots in arms and money in pockets and kids back in school, people back to work.

But our recovery is far from over. Just moments ago Fed Chair Powell said that we are seeing some temporary upticks because things were so dire last year, but we still have a long way to go.

The bigger risk to the economy is not doing enough to raise workers' wages and to invest in the infrastructure that allows our economy to grow.

We know corporate leaders, we know millionaire Senators, we know people at the top have done very--in many cases, have done very, very well through this, but we know millions of workers, many of them hourly workers, have lost jobs. We know millions of workers, so-called essential workers--one essential worker said to me, works in a grocery store: I don't feel essential. Frankly, I feel expendable because they don't pay me much; they don't protect me at work. Those are the people we should be looking after.

I want to raise wages. I want to bring down costs. That is exactly what the jobs plan and the family plan will do--bring down healthcare costs, make childcare more affordable, create more housing people can afford, bring down energy bills, make work--getting to work cheaper and easier with better transit. These are the costs that have been rising and eating away at family budgets for decades.

If my colleague from Florida is so concerned about the cost of living and raising a family, I hope he will join me to allow Medicare to negotiate directly with drug companies to bring down prices for seniors. I hope he will join us in investing in childcare to bring down the cost of childcare. I hope he will join us as we work to create more housing, bringing down housing costs. I hope he will join us to raise the minimum wage.

My first speech on this floor 14 years ago--14 years ago, my first speech on this floor was to raise the minimum wage, and we did, and it hasn't been raised since. That is what the Senator from Florida and the Senator from Indiana can help us with.

But we know most of the conservative elites in this country--most won't say out loud what this inflation alarmism is really about. They don't want to invest in the American people. They don't want to do anything to make Americans' hard work pay off. They would rather try to scare people: Can't spend this money because there might be inflation.

They don't want us to do what too many have failed to do: put money in people's pockets and raise wages and rebuild infrastructure.

I would ask my colleagues to listen to the words of a worker from West Virginia, Pamela Garrison. She testified at our first-ever work listening session, our ``Dignity of Work'' session in the Banking and Housing Committee yesterday. She said:

We're seeing corporations make billions every quarter in profit, but then when we ask for a minimum wage raise, we're told that ``no that will raise the cost of stuff, oh that'll cost jobs.''

Funny, corporate executives never seem to say they will have to raise prices when they give themselves bonuses. It is just we will have to raise prices if we increase the minimum wage.

This same Ms. Garrison also said: You know, they call me part of the working poor. The words ``working'' and ``poor'' shouldn't be in the same sentence, and she is right about that.

Real expenses for most families have gone up for decades, along with corporate profits and the stock market. Executive compensation has exploded upward, and workers' wages haven't kept up.

Executive compensation--productivity is up. Executive compensation is up. Profits are up. Workers' wages are flat. That is the problem. That is what we should be working on.

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