Hearing Wrap Up: Americans are Less Confident About the Economy After Four Years of Biden-Harris Inflationary Spending and Regulations

Press ReleasePublished: Sep 25, 2024

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WASHINGTON-The Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs today held a hearing titled "Kitchen Table Economics: How Failed Biden-Harris Policies Continue to Hurt Consumers" to bring transparency to the Biden-Harris Administration's economic policies of inflation-inducing government spending and regulations which have driven up costs and restricted choices for American households and taxpayers. Earlier today, the Oversight Committee released a staff report detailing how the Biden-Harris Administration has imposed a historic $1.7 trillion in new federal regulatory costs.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

The Biden-Harris Administration's policies of government spending and regulations have unleashed inflation and slowed the economy.

• Democrats' multi-trillion-dollar spending packages, such as the American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, have contributed to inflation.
• Agencies have put forth sweeping regulations costing roughly $1.7 trillion in implementation costs that will slow economic growth.
• Dr. Paul Winfree, President and CEO of the Economic Policy Innovation Center said during his opening remarks, "The Biden-Harris Administration's economic strategy is founded on the belief that public spending is the engine of job creation, income growth, and wealth. However, this approach has contributed to both rising costs and ineffective government. It has also hindered the broader capacity of economic policy to create an environment that fosters economic opportunity. A more effective approach to economic policy would involve focusing on full employment, low inflation, and sustainable growth."
• The Democrats' witness, Brendan Duke, previously worked for the Biden-Harris Administration's National Economic Council and could not effectively defend the administration's spending and regulatory blitz driving up costs for the American people.

Under the Biden-Harris Administration, American households and workers are worse off than they were even a few short years ago under the Trump Administration. Americans now feel less confident about the state of the economy and the future ahead.

• Since the beginning of the Biden-Harris Administration, the national debt has risen from $27.8 trillion to over $35 trillion in under four years.
• Nearly half of homeowners and renters in America are struggling to afford their housing payments.
• The average American household has lost roughly $2,000 of purchasing power since January 2021, which disproportionately impacts low-income households.
• Patrice Onwuka, Director, Center for Economic Opportunity at the Independent Women's Forum discussed how Biden-Harris Administraiton policies have fueled inflation and impacted American households. "Inflation and high prices are the consequences of unsustainable federal spending and burdensome regulations, particularly on energy. Economists on the left and the right agree that the 1.9 trillion-dollar American Rescue Plan fueled inflation by injecting the economy with stimulus funding when the economy could not keep pace."

MEMBER HIGHLIGHTS:

Subcommittee Chairman Pat Fallon (R-Texas) examined how the regulatory spending cap proposed in the House Republicans' REG Budgeting Act would benefit businesses and consumers.

Rep. Pat Fallon: "Overregulation has been the silent killer of economic growth under the Biden-Harris Administration, imposing roughly $1.7 trillion dollars in regulatory costs on businesses and households in the last four years. To reign in these egregious levels of red tape, we introduced the REG Budgeting Act to establish a regulatory spending cap for each federal agency to incentivize agencies to reduce these burdens and rescind outdated regulations before they institute new ones. This action alone can save hundreds of billions of dollars or more in unnecessary costs as we saw during the Trump Administration, which achieved a net reduction in unnecessary regulatory costs. How might a proposal such as this benefit businesses and consumers?"

Dr. Winfree: "I think that it would benefit businesses and consumers and American households tremendously. I mean, just getting the administration to think about the tradeoffs of their regulation is a helpful exercise. It's not something that we have experimented with unilaterally in the United States as we did in the Trump Administration in 2017. It's something that is a typical procedure that's used in the United Kingdom and also in Canada and a number of our peer nations."

Rep. Fallon: "Regulatory burdens have been implemented by the Biden-Harris Administration's green climate agenda on household appliances like stoves and dishwashers and water heaters. How will these changes affect Americans and more specifically low-income Americans?"

Ms. Onwuka: "These new regulations, these requirements, number one they're cost-prohibitive for the up-front cost for spending on these new appliances. The up-front cost for installing these things is cost-prohibitive to many households, particularly those who are low income."

Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.) highlighted how the Biden-Harris Administration's regulations have reduced consumer choice and increased costs for Americans.

Rep. Langworthy: "Since day one of the Biden-Harris Administration, Americans have seen an all-out attack on consumer choice. Whether it be the appliances that we buy or the cars that we drive, the Biden-Harris Administration has forgotten about everyday Americans and instead has catered to a radical left-wing environmental cult by choosing winners and losers in consumer markets. Mr. DeVore, would you agree with this characterization?"

Mr. DeVore: "Well, certainly Mrs. DeVore would agree with that characterization given the low quality and the unusual characteristics of some of the low-energy appliances we've been forced to purchase, many of which seem to soon fail and take frequently considerably longer to accomplish their tasks in the name of nominal energy savings."

Rep. Langworthy: "Do you believe that these mandates have contributed to the findings of data reported on by the New York Post in July where 73 percent of Americans reported that their utility bills strain their finances and one in ten said that they would borrow money from friends or family to cover costs."

Ms. Onwuka: "Absolutely. There's an increase in utility costs and obviously if you are able to afford these new energy-efficient appliances maybe that is contributing, but overall, their utility bills are up. I think we're increasingly seeing a lot of families who are making, as I mentioned, that heat-or-eat existential choice."

Rep. Russell Fry (R-S.C.) discussed how the Biden-Harris Administration threatened American energy independence and asked what actions could be taken to unleash American energy.

Rep. Fry: "What are some of the ways in which the next administration should differ hopefully than the current one as it pertains to energy independence. Are there policies that on day one should be reexamined or repealed so that we're actually an energy leader in the world?"

Mr. DeVore: "That's a great question. Of course, you need to open up federal lands again for exploration and for energy extraction. I don't know if it can be undone, but certainly the Keystone XL pipeline was something that would have been fantastic for North America. […] The other thing I think would be to rescind a lot of these unhelpful subsidies that were passed in the Inflation Reduction Act. What happens is they're giving an incentive to unreliable, undispatchable power. When you have power grids, as we've seen in California and as we've begun to see in Texas, that over-rely on wind and solar, what ends up happening is those power grids become unstable."

READ MORE: Fallon Opens Hearing on Anti-Growth Biden-Harris Economic Policies

CLICK HERE to watch the hearing.