[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



                        KITCHEN TABLE ECONOMICS:
                    HOW FAILED BIDEN-HARRIS POLICIES
                       CONTINUE TO HURT CONSUMERS

=======================================================================


                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                SUBCOMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC GROWTH, ENERGY 
                     POLICY, AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS

                                 OF THE

                       COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND
                             ACCOUNTABILITY

                     U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION
                               __________

                           SEPTEMBER 25, 2024
                               __________

                           Serial No. 118-133
                               __________

  Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability




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                       Available on: govinfo.gov,
                         oversight.house.gov or
                             docs.house.gov                           
                                 ______

                  U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
                  
56-966 PDF                WASHINGTON : 2024





























               COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND ACCOUNTABILITY

                    JAMES COMER, Kentucky, Chairman

Jim Jordan, Ohio                     Jamie Raskin, Maryland, Ranking 
Mike Turner, Ohio                      Minority Member
Paul Gosar, Arizona                  Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of 
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina          Columbia
Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin            Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts
Michael Cloud, Texas                 Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia
Gary Palmer, Alabama                 Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Clay Higgins, Louisiana              Ro Khanna, California
Pete Sessions, Texas                 Kweisi Mfume, Maryland
Andy Biggs, Arizona                  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York
Nancy Mace, South Carolina           Katie Porter, California
Jake LaTurner, Kansas                Cori Bush, Missouri
Pat Fallon, Texas                    Shontel Brown, Ohio
Byron Donalds, Florida               Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania            Robert Garcia, California
William Timmons, South Carolina      Maxwell Frost, Florida
Tim Burchett, Tennessee              Summer Lee, Pennsylvania
Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia      Greg Casar, Texas
Lisa McClain, Michigan               Jasmine Crockett, Texas
Lauren Boebert, Colorado             Dan Goldman, New York
Russell Fry, South Carolina          Jared Moskowitz, Florida
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida           Rashida Tlaib, Michigan
Nick Langworthy, New York            Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Eric Burlison, Missouri
Mike Waltz, Florida

                                 ------                                

                       Mark Marin, Staff Director
       Jessica Donlon, Deputy Staff Director and General Counsel
                Kim Waskowsky, Professional Staff Member
                     Daniel Flores, Senior Counsel
                 Emily Allen, Professional Staff Member
                Robert Flores, Professional Staff Member
      Mallory Cogar, Deputy Director of Operations and Chief Clerk

                      Contact Number: 202-225-5074

                  Julie Tagen, Minority Staff Director
                      Contact Number: 202-225-5051
                      
                                 ------                                

 Subcommittee On Economic Growth, Energy Policy, And Regulatory Affairs

                      Pat Fallon, Texas, Chairman
Byron Donalds, Florida               Cori Bush, Missouri, Ranking 
Scott Perry, Pennsylvania              Minority Member
Lisa McClain, Michigan               Shontel Brown, Ohio
Lauren Boebert, Colorado             Melanie Stansbury, New Mexico
Russell Fry, South Carolina          Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of 
Anna Paulina Luna, Florida             Columbia
Nick Langworthy, New York            Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois
Mike Waltz, Florida                  Ro Khanna, California
                                     Vacancy 
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                                     
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

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                                                                   Page

Hearing held on September 25, 2024...............................     1




                               Witnesses

                              ----------                              

Dr. Paul Winfree, Ph.D., President & CEO, Economic Policy 
  Innovation Center
Oral Statement...................................................     6
Ms. Patrice Onwuka, Director, Center for Economic Opportunity, 
  Independent Women's Forum
Oral Statement...................................................     7
Mr. Chuck DeVore, Chief National Initiatives Officer, Texas 
  Public Policy Foundation
Oral Statement...................................................     9
Mr. Brendan Duke (Minority Witness), Senior Director for Economic 
  Policy, Center for American Progress Action Fund
Oral Statement...................................................    10

Opening statements and the prepared statements for the witnesses 
  are available in the U.S. House of Representatives Repository 
  at: docs.house.gov.







                           Index of Documents

                              ----------                              

  * Report, Regulatory Overreach Staff Report; submitted by Rep. 
    Fallon.

  * Letter, Nobel Prize Winning Economists; submitted by Rep. 
    Norton.

  * Document, ``Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, 
    Project 2025 ''; submitted by Rep. Stansbury.


The documents listed above are available at: docs.house.gov.

 
                        KITCHEN TABLE ECONOMICS:
                    HOW FAILED BIDEN-HARRIS POLICIES
                       CONTINUE TO HURT CONSUMERS

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                 Wednesday, September 25, 2024

                   U.S. House of Representatives
              Committee on Oversight and Accountability
                Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy 
                   Policy, and Regulatory Affairs
                                           Washington, D.C.

    The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:10 a.m., in 
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Pat Fallon 
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
    Present: Representatives Fallon, Fry, Langworthy, Brown, 
Stansbury, Norton, and Khanna.
    Mr. Fallon. This hearing of the Subcommittee on Economic 
Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs will come to 
order. I want to welcome everybody for joining us today.
    Without objection, the Chair may declare a recess at any 
time.
    I recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening 
statement.
    Over the last 3 1/2 years into the Biden-Harris 
Administration, many Americans are asking themselves a very 
important question. I remember when I was a kid in the 1980 
campaign, challenger, Governor Ronald Reagan, looked at folks 
and asked, ``Are you better off now than you were 4 years 
ago,'' and I think every American should ask themselves that 
question when they go to the polls in the coming month and a 
half. Vice President Harris struggles to answer this question 
because she knows in most parts of the country, the answer is 
an emphatic no. As we have discussed in this subcommittee a 
year ago, Bidenomics has had a devastating effect for families 
across this country and their ability to plan for the future. 
Households have watched their paychecks disappear, while seeing 
the costs of goods and services rise. While President Biden 
claims his economic policy is restoring the American Dream, too 
many find this dream just out of touch.
    Since the beginning of the Biden-Harris Administration, 
total inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, has 
risen 20.2 percent. Estimates show that Americans must now 
spend over $11,000 more each year to have the same quality of 
life that they had in January 2021. Grocery prices for goods, 
such as bread, poultry, and cereal, have all increased in price 
by 20 percent and eggs nearly 50 percent. Gasoline used to 
transport these goods, that has increased by almost 50 percent, 
further driving costs up. Housing costs for mortgages and rent 
have both increased. Average rent prices are now 24 percent 
higher. Mortgage rates have doubled, making it nearly 
impossible for young Americans to afford their first home.
    Real wages, and this is very important, real wages for 
workers are also lower since the start of the Biden-Harris 
Administration, further straining the ability to keep pace with 
rising prices. Businesses are struggling to cope with the $1.7 
trillion in new regulatory costs that the Biden-Harris 
Administration has imposed on the American economy. This 
Administration has engaged in massive regulatory overreach in 
an attempt to fundamentally alter or kill almost every energy 
and manufacturing industry job in that sector.
    This morning, the committee released a new report entitled 
``Death by a Thousand Regulations: The Biden-Harris 
Administration's Campaign to Bury America in Red Tape.'' I ask 
unanimous consent to enter that into the record.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    This report details the Committee's findings on how the 
Biden-Harris Administration's avalanche of costly regulations 
impact both businesses and consumers. The report also 
highlights effective legislative solutions this Committee has 
been advancing to provide necessary reforms to the regulatory 
process.
    Of course, the Biden-Harris regulatory onslaught is not the 
only way this Administration has tried to impose their left-
wing agenda on Americans. Last Congress, the Administration, 
with the help from congressional Democrats, spent trillions of 
taxpayer dollars driving inflation and weakening our economy. 
The ``Inflation Reduction Act'' and the ``American Rescue 
Plan'' did not reduce inflation or rescue Americans--it did the 
opposite. Yet, Vice President Harris says Bidenomics is 
working, and both of these massive spending packages were 
simply slush funds for left-wing causes. The other side of the 
aisle wants to obscure the truth, claiming that greedflation, 
or corporate greed, is the invisible force driving these 
hardships. They want to ignore how the Biden-Harris 
Administration's massive regulatory overreach and government 
spending are hurting the American people. They are not 
interested in transparency or accountability.
    So, today we have--all of Congress we continue to shine the 
light on the Biden-Harris Administration. We will hold this 
Administration accountable for the $1.7 trillion in new 
regulatory costs upon the economy at a time when it was needed 
the very least. We will hold the Biden-Harris Administration 
accountable for the hidden taxes on consumers as businesses 
navigate these bureaucratic hurdles, raising prices, lowering 
wages to stay afloat. We will hold the Biden-Harris 
Administration accountable for their destruction of the 
American Dream for so many, and really, too many Americans, and 
Americans deserve answers.
    They are frustrated and believe their government is not 
listening to them when they sound the alarm on the economy. And 
you see this in the polls as to who can handle the economy 
better, and they are not polling well at all. Americans deserve 
better, and we need to do better if we have any hope in what we 
all want for ourselves and our children, which is to live the 
American Dream.
    Our expert panel of witnesses is here to dispel many of the 
myths spun by the Biden-Harris Administration and offer their 
insights into how we can right the wrongs of the Biden-Harris 
Administration's economic policies. I want to thank the 
witnesses for appearing before the Subcommittee to share their 
insights, and I look forward to this discussion. And on an 
editor's note, I think it is very interesting that this 
Administration has been known since its inception as the 
``Biden-Harris Administration,'' but now the Vice President 
wants you to forget about the hyphen and the ``Harris.'' I now 
recognize Ranking Member Stansbury for an opening statement.
    Ms. Stansbury. All right. Well good morning, everyone. 
Thank you to the Chairman. I want to welcome everyone to the 
Oversight Committee, and if it has not been apparent in the 
opening remarks, we are 41 days from the Presidential election 
because the Oversight Committee has been using this Committee, 
speaking of slush funds, as a slush fund for Donald Trump 
campaign.
    So, here we are once again. We had a similar hearing last 
week in which the Committee Majority brought in witnesses who 
are tied to Project 2025 and tied to both the former, and what 
I think Donald Trump would hope would be his future, 
Administration to talk about and to platform their extreme 
agenda that would take away American rights and that will 
misrepresent what is happening in our economy, what has 
happened over the last several years, all in the name of 
impugning the Vice President, who, of course, is on the ballot 
with Donald Trump. So, you are going to hear a lot of things 
today. Most of them are probably not based in facts, economics, 
ways in which this country is actually structured. So, I want 
to just take the opportunity to kind of set the record straight 
from the top.
    Our colleagues today are going to promote a false narrative 
that the Biden-Harris Administration policies are all about 
hurting American consumers, that they are driving inflation, 
that they have destroyed our economy. Of course, Americans are 
struggling right now. We have just faced a historic pandemic. 
Many Americans were struggling before the pandemic. We are 
still recovering from it. But the truth of the matter is that 
the United States has amongst the lowest inflationary rates of 
any industrialized country in the world right now, and it is 
because of the American Recovery Plan, because of the historic 
legislation that the Biden-Harris Administration has put into 
place, and that the previous Congress, under Democratic 
leadership, passed, that we were able to stop some of the more 
devastating impacts of the pandemic and the devastating impacts 
of the previous Administration. So, the exact opposite is true.
    We have seen over the course of the Biden-Harris 
Administration that they inherited an economic mess. It was 
both the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was also the 
impacts of what happened under the previous Administration. And 
if you roll back the tape, of course, you will see that during 
the Trump Administration, he advocated for the largest tax 
giveaway in American history to the wealthiest individuals and 
large corporations, which has helped to drive not only extreme 
impacts on the U.S. economy, but enrich the wealth of 
individuals and corporations at the expense of the working 
people of this country. Under the Trump Administration, 
unemployment skyrocketed to nearly 15 percent. It was the 
highest since the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics began 
collecting data in 1948--the highest--that is outrageous.
    And then as soon as he took office, President Biden worked 
with Congress to pass meaningful legislation to get it under 
control. We passed the American Rescue Plan, which not only 
helped millions of Americans get through one of the largest 
economic disturbances in American history, but also through one 
of the largest pandemics in which the former President was 
telling people to swallow bleach to deal with COVID-19 and 
telling them to take horse pills. If we want to talk about the 
economy, talk about facts. Let us actually talk about facts.
    I want to just emphasize some of the important pieces of 
legislation that have helped the United States get inflation 
and our economy back on track. It was not just that Biden-
Harris came in under this set of extenuating circumstances. 
President Biden had a vision of the future of this country. He 
had a vision for bringing back American jobs to this country 
and helped to pass the CHIPS and Science Act, which is one of 
the most important modern manufacturing bills, as well as the 
national security bill, to make sure that we are manufacturing 
Made in America goods here on American soil. That is creating 
thousands of jobs and helping to bring manufacturing back to 
our rural communities, including in mine.
    He passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, which is 
building water lines and broadband and roads and bridges all 
across America. And he passed the Inflation Reduction Act, 
which extended healthcare to millions of Americans which states 
had refused to provide expanded Medicaid to, and so our lowest-
income individuals across the country are actually having 
access to healthcare for the first time.
    The Inflation Reduction Act was also a historic investment 
in the future of this country. It is an investment in our 
economy as we make a transition to an energy economy that is 
clean and that solves our climate crisis. Right now, we are 
seeing millions of dollars being pumped into our communities 
that is revitalizing local jobs, that is bringing home 
manufacturing, and that is employing thousands of New Mexicans 
and millions of Americans across the country.
    Now, the question is, how do we translate these economic 
gains into the real lived experiences of New Mexicans and 
Americans across the country? It is easy for politicians to 
come here and to explain to the American people how hard it is 
to put food on the table and a roof over their head. I grew up 
in a working family. I grew up in a family that struggled to 
get by, that struggled to make ends meet. And had it not been, 
during times of crisis when we could depend on resources to 
help us with housing and to pay for utility bills and to help 
put food on the table, I would not be sitting here as a 
Congresswoman today. We know that these programs help lift 
American people out of poverty, and we know that they stimulate 
the economy.
    So, I will just say, as we embark on what I am sure will be 
an interesting journey into false and fun facts this morning, 
that the American people are smart. Do not be fooled by what 
you are hearing here today. This is yet another campaign 
opportunity that the Majority is using to platform and advance 
Donald Trump's extreme agenda, and I do not think the American 
people are going to buy it. So, thanks. I yield back.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you. This is a platform on truth, and 
just for the record, I grew up in a middle-class family.
    Ms. Stansbury. Excellent.
    Mr. Fallon. We have with us today experts on this panel and 
who will bring valuable experience and insight that will be 
beneficial, I think, to our discussion.
    First, we have Dr. Paul Winfree, who is President and CEO 
of the Economic Policy Innovation Center. He previously served 
as Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, 
Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council, and Director of 
the Budget Policy in the Trump Administration. He was also 
formerly the distinguished fellow in Economic Policy and Public 
Leadership at the Heritage Foundation. Patrice Onkuwa. I am 
sorry. Help me out.
    Ms. Onwuka. Onwuka.
    Mr. Fallon. Onwuka. Thank you. Patrice Onwuka serves as the 
Director of the Center of Economic Opportunity at the 
Independent Women's Forum. She has worked in policy, advocacy, 
and communications roles in the White House for more than a 
decade on issues related to the economy, employment, 
technology, philanthropy, and the criminal justice system.
    Chuck DeVore serves as the Chief National Initiatives 
Officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and Texans refer 
to it as TPPF. He was also previously a member of the 
California State Assembly. He also was formerly a Reagan White 
House appointee in the Pentagon and a lieutenant colonel in the 
United States Army. Thank you for your service, sir. And 
finally, we have Brendan Duke, who serves as a Senior Director 
for Economic Policy at the Center of American Progress Action 
Fund. He is a former Hill staffer and previously served in the 
Biden-Harris Administration as a senior policy adviser at the 
White House National Economic Council. I want to thank you all 
four for being here.
    Pursuant to Committee Rule 9(g), the witnesses will please 
stand and raise their right hand.
    Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are 
about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
the truth, so help you God?
    [A chorus of ayes.]
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you. You may sit down. Let the record 
show that the witnesses answered in the affirmative.
    We appreciate you being here and thank you for your 
testimony. Let me remind the witnesses that we have read your 
written statements, and it will appear in full in the hearing 
record. Please limit your oral testimony, if you could, to 5 
minutes. As a reminder, please press the little button in front 
of you. You are going to see a green light go on for 4 minutes, 
and then there is going to be yellow light for 1 minute, and 
then the red light when it comes up, if you have not finished 
your remarks, if you could kind of wrap them up right there, we 
would greatly appreciate that.
    I now recognize Dr. Winfree for his opening statement.

                    STATEMENT OF PAUL WINFREE, PH.D.
                            PRESIDENT & CEO
                   ECONOMIC POLICY INNOVATION CENTER

    Dr. Winfree. Thank you, Chairman Fallon and Ranking Member 
Stansbury and the Members of the Committee, and thank you for 
your opening statements. There were lots of very important 
points that were made by both sides.
    Each year, the White House Council of Economic Advisors 
submits an Economic Report of the President. The ERP outlines 
the Administration's key economic goals and strategies to 
achieve them, serving as a crucial part of the Federal budget 
process. The 2022 ERP, the first under this Administration, 
established the primary goal of ``restoring the public sector 
as a partner in long-run growth.'' This objective focuses on 
new ways of integrating the government into the economy based 
on a concept that Federal investment is foundational to 
economic growth.
    Based on virtually any metric, the Biden-Harris 
Administration has succeeded in growing the size and scope of 
the Federal Government. After the 2020 pandemic surge in 
Federal spending, debt as a percent of the economy briefly 
declined, but from April 2021 onward, it has consistently 
grown. Federal hiring has hit all-time highs, and state and 
local government employment has grown significantly, supported 
by Federal subsidies. Furthermore, new regulations from the 
Administration have added considerable cost to the private 
sector, as Chairman Fallon noted, $1.7 trillion in regulatory 
costs and $325 million in paperwork hours. 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. Policymakers should also harness American 
entrepreneurship to drive innovation, job creation, and wealth 
generation. Ensuring market competition while limiting 
government regulation to essential safety standards would 
encourage economic dynamism and reduce costs for consumers.
    Inflation remains one of the most significant issues facing 
Americans today. As of July 2024, it takes about $1.20 to 
purchase what $1 bought in January 2021. Although some have 
blamed corporate price gouging, research indicates that tight 
labor markets and large budget deficits are the primary drivers 
of inflation. The tight labor market, which saw job vacancies 
outpacing unemployment, contributed to wage inflation and price 
increases. Additionally, fewer workers have returned to the 
work force following the pandemic, with around 2.9 million 
fewer people employed today than pre-pandemic trends would 
suggest. The shortage of workers, particularly among younger 
cohorts, and particularly among young, male cohorts, has 
lowered productivity, reduced government revenues, and 
increased the Federal deficit.
    Deficit spending is another major cause of inflation. Since 
2020, 76 percent of new government spending has been financed 
by debt. Fourteen percent has been financed by printing money. 
Together, tight labor markets and deficit spending can explain 
about 80 percent of the increase in core inflation that has 
occurred since the beginning of 2021. Inflation has been 
further exacerbated by the Inflation Reduction Act. According 
to the Congressional Budget Office, the IRA increased spending 
by $110 billion and the deficit by $60 billion between 2022 and 
2026, compounding inflationary pressures that were already in 
motion. Furthermore, the Administration has been hampered by 
its focus on multiple competing initiatives, which has 
undermined its effectiveness of its core economic priorities.
    A prime example of this is the Broadband Equity Access and 
Deployment Program, a key component of Bidenomics aimed at 
expanding high-speed internet access. Although almost $43 
billion has been allocated to this initiative at the end of 
2021 and the money was sent to the states last summer, as of 
today, no households have been connected due to administrative 
restrictions and delays, including efforts to regulate internet 
pricing. At the same time, the Affordable Connectivity Program, 
which provided subsidies to low-income households for internet 
access, increased broadband prices for all consumers by 
subsidizing demand without expanding supply because BEAD has 
ultimately failed. On average, ACP increased broadband prices 
by about seven percent.
    Moving forward, reducing the deficit and deregulation in a 
way that increases market competition would be more effective 
at reducing costs for essential goods like housing, food, and 
healthcare. Congress will have an opportunity to do this in the 
new year by dealing with a series of events, such as the 
expiration of the 2017 tax cuts and the reinstatement of the 
debt limit, as well as many other fiscal inflection points 
that, regardless of how the election turns out, you will be 
asked to confront. The budget process and budget 
reconciliation, in particular, are tailor made to provide an 
opportunity to address the rising cost of living by reducing 
government spending.
    With that, I yield back the remainder of my time. I look 
forward to your questions.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you very much. I now recognize Ms. Onwuka 
for her opening statement.

                      STATEMENT OF PATRICE ONWUKA
               DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY
                       INDEPENDENT WOMEN'S FORUM

    Ms. Onwuka. Thank you, Chairman Fallon, Ranking Member 
Stansbury, and the Committee for inviting me today. My name is 
Patrice Onwuka, and I am the Director of the Center for 
Economic Opportunity at Independent Women's Forum. We are 
committed to increasing the number of women who value free 
markets and personal liberty. My remarks today will focus on 
how ill-advised Federal policies under the Biden-Harris 
Administration have led to remarkable hardship for American 
households.
    We know that prices are up 20 percent, heating oil is up 36 
percent, electricity is up 32 percent, natural gas up 25 
percent. Housing costs have accelerated and are the biggest 
driver of the Consumer Price Index, also the inflation rate. 
Credit cards and mortgages all cost more each month. And 
consequently, American households are in a more tenuous 
financial position than they were before the inflation took off 
in early 2021. Lagging growth in real wages has eroded 
Americans' purchasing power. Average households have lost 
roughly $2,000 of purchasing power since that time. The average 
middle-class household lost at least $33,000 in real wealth. 
Personal savings have fallen by nearly $3 trillion, while 
collective credit card balances are an all-time high of $1.1 
trillion. The monthly cost of the median-priced home in the 
United States is at its highest in more than 30 years.
    More alarmingly, poor and working-class families are 
spending disproportionately more of their income on essential 
items such as food and energy. Low-income families often face a 
heat-or-eat dilemma, an existential choice between paying for 
utilities or buying food, medicine, and shelter. And low-income 
Black communities, households experienced the highest rates of 
energy challenges compared to their other demographic comports' 
households. Regionally, low-income families in the Southeast 
states are also disproportionately likely to face energy 
hardships. Take a 44-year-old North Carolina mom who said, 
`sometimes I have to choose between whether I am going to pay 
the light bill or pay rent and food.'
    Why is that the case in the United States, in a place where 
we should have so much prosperity? Well, I would argue that 
Federal policy under the Biden Administration has undermined 
domestic energy production and fueled inflation. 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 American Rescue Plan fueled inflation by injecting the 
economy with stimulus funding when the economy could not keep 
pace.
    It is a myth that inflation is due to Russia invading 
Ukraine. Inflation had already risen to 7.9 percent when Putin 
invaded Ukraine. It is also a myth that supply chain 
disruptions continue to drive inflation today. We have seen 
those supply chain disruptions have eased, and thankfully, the 
overly generous pandemic benefits that were a disincentive for 
people to return to work have come to an end. Finally, it is a 
myth that big companies, from energy companies to grocers, are 
price gouging, causing prices to remain high. The Federal 
Reserve Bank of San Francisco examined industry-level data on 
price markups of goods and found no evidence of widespread 
markups on goods across all industries, so legislation and 
regulatory efforts to attack price gouging are futile at best 
and will not bring down prices.
    The Biden-Harris climate agenda has focused on undermining 
domestic energy production, causing energy costs to rise. 
Everything grown, manufactured, produced, packaged, and 
transported depends on energy, and as energy prices rise, we as 
consumers are forced to pay more for the goods and services we 
depend on. Yet this Administration has canceled pipelines, 
taking millions of acres offline for drilling, and instituted 
restrictive new environmental standards that raise the cost of 
drilling. It has also pursued a carbon-reducing regulatory 
agenda that forces households to switch to costly appliances. 
We are paying 34 percent more for appliances compared to 15 
years ago, and by targeting 15 consumer appliances with new 
energy restriction standards, everything from stoves to 
refrigerators and air conditioners, even clothing washers and 
dishwashers, we are going to see fewer available appliances on 
the market, fewer options for consumers.
    The upfront cost of installing these new appliances are 
cost prohibitive to many households, so they are not even going 
to enjoy any purported energy savings, and they will have to 
compromise on features and performance and results. Let us be 
realistic here. How can we ask American households to pay an 
average of $9,000 to retrofit their home with these appliances 
when they can barely afford heat?
    I look forward to more discussion about today's topic, and 
thank you for your time.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you very much. The Chair now recognizes 
Mr. DeVore for his opening statement.

                       STATEMENT OF CHUCK DEVORE
                   CHIEF NATIONAL INITIATIVES OFFICER
                     TEXAS PUBLIC POLICY FOUNDATION

    Mr. DeVore. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member 
Stansbury. I think it is important to note that as the COVID-19 
triggered a recession, it was, in fact, a very short and sharp 
recession due to the fact that it was government-imposed 
lockdowns that caused the loss in labor. In the period of time 
from the recession to the inauguration of the Biden-Harris 
Administration, though, 57 percent of those pandemic jobs that 
were lost were recovered. It took another 17 months, though, to 
return to the same level of employment that had been the case 
just before the onset of COVID.
    Now, with all that Federal money being spent, the question 
might be why did it take 17 months? For gosh sakes, that is a 
long time. One reason is likely the collapse of what has been 
known as the multiplier effect. That is an economic theory that 
says that when the Federal Government spends money or ``invests 
in the economy,'' that those investments result in a multiple 
of dollars being returned back to the economy, as might happen 
with real investments. Unfortunately, as we have now 
accumulated some $35 trillion in Federal debt, the multiplier 
effect has been declining.
    During the Great Recession era of the American Recovery and 
Reinvestment Act--that would be clear back in 2009, almost 
halcyon times by comparison to today--the multiplier effect at 
that time for that government spending was estimated to be 
about 60 cents on the dollar. In other words, you were 40 cents 
underwater. The most recent expenditures, for example, with the 
so-called Inflation Reduction Act, the multiplier effect is 
likely collapsed to 20 cents on the dollar, meaning a lot of 
that money is being wasted, and as a result, the investments 
really function to change the economy. We saw that when 
President Biden, just a couple of weeks ago, admitted that the 
Inflation Reduction Act had little to do with reducing 
inflation and everything to do with transitioning the economy 
from hydrocarbons to electricity for the purposes of climate 
change.
    Now, I have got perhaps some advanced warning or experience 
with this because, like Mr. Khanna, I am originally from 
California. In fact, I served in the legislature there for 6 
years before being termed out and then, I think wisely, moving 
to Texas in 2011. While I was a state legislator, I voted 
``no'' a lot, and I voted ``no'' on the very items that, of 
course, passed the legislature back then and have been kind of 
mirrored in Federal policy since, so it is like a preview of 
coming attractions. And of course, this is somewhat due to, as 
we refer to the state sometimes as laboratories of democracy, 
and for better or for worse, California is often at the very 
leading edge of developing these new ideas, and we can kind of 
see from the record how that has affected Californians.
    So, for example, the U.S. Census Bureau since 2009 has 
published the Supplemental Measure of Poverty. It takes into 
account the cost of living, noncash benefits, et cetera. 
California, ever since this new measure was rolled out, has 
always had the Nation's highest poverty rate. The other thing 
that I think is important to understand is the regulatory 
burden in California. We passed a measure back when I was in 
office--one of the things I did vote for--that looked at the 
regulatory compliance cost in California for California-based 
regulations. What we found is that in inflation-adjusted terms 
today, it would be worth more than $200,000 per small business 
simply to comply with regulations. It is important to note, 
then, though, that at the time, Federal regulations were 
estimated to be, oh, I do not know, at about $1.1 trillion in 
compliance costs, meaning that the Biden-Harris regulatory 
regime more than doubled the amount of regulations that were on 
the books just before the Great Recession.
    I think it is also important to understand that energy 
plays a big role in this. California has seen their energy 
costs go from 8th highest in the Nation to now the second 
highest in the Nation, only behind Hawaii, and there are 
reasons for this. It is California's aggressive push for 
electrifying their economy. It comes at a great cost to 
California workers and to the very high cost of living in 
California, and unfortunately, I think that we are going down 
the same path today.
    And then last, I think it is important to note that some 
people who look at the Biden-Harris record like to point to 
total payroll growth since the inauguration. The problem with 
that is that we are looking at total employment. We are not 
looking at how much average wages have grown. And if you know 
anything about how employment has shifted since inauguration, 
the vast majority of those jobs have gone to foreign-born 
individuals, many of whom probably all of whom--majority, 
pardon me--are here illegally. So, people who are benefiting 
from this are generally not Americans.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you, sir. The Chair now recognizes Mr. 
Duke for his opening statement.

                       STATEMENT OF BRENDAN DUKE
                  SENIOR DIRECTOR FOR ECONOMIC POLICY
                CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS ACTION FUND

    Mr. Duke. Thank you, Chairman Fallon, Ranking Member 
Stansbury, and Members of the Subcommittee. My name is Brendan 
Duke, and I am Senior Director for Economic Policy at the 
Center for American Progress Action Fund. I am honored to 
testify today on the performance of the economy since 2021, as 
well as some of the inflationary risks I see on the horizon.
    Inflation has been a challenge for working families since 
2020, but the good news is that the 6-month annualized 
inflation rate was 2.3 percent in July, just above the Federal 
Reserve's target. It is now lower than the 3.1 percent rate 
when President Biden took office in January 2021. In fact, the 
Federal Reserve cut rates just last week because inflationary 
risks have receded. The U.S. economy has weathered an array of 
once-in-a-generation challenges or even once-a-generation 
challenges such as a pandemic, Russia's war in Ukraine, a 
semiconductor shortage, and more.
    The recovery is most apparent in the share of workers with 
a job which is essentially at a peacetime high and at its 2000 
level, after accounting for the aging of the population. The 
wage of a typical worker grew 25 percent between the 4th 
quarter of 2019 to July 2024, while prices rose 22 percent. 
Wage growth for lower-wage workers has been even faster.
    There is no dispute that cumulative inflation over the last 
4 years has frustrated families, though. An analysis of when, 
where, and why inflation surged shows that the vast majority of 
it is the result of supply chain disruptions that came from the 
unfreezing of the parts of the economy that froze during the 
pandemic. We have published analyses by the White House Council 
of Economic Advisers and former Federal Reserve Chair and Bush 
Administration official, Ben Bernanke, showing this. But 
perhaps the easiest way to see this is to look at inflation in 
other advanced economies, which also surged. The U.S.'s fiscal 
response to COVID was larger than these other countries, but 
they experienced similar inflation to us. I still have not 
heard a single explanation for how the U.S. could have avoided 
these inflationary shocks that hit Germany, the U.K., and other 
rich countries.
    Where the U.S. economy does stand apart, though, is growth. 
The German economy, for example, grew less than one percent, 
and the U.K. economy grew less than two percent. Over a period, 
the U.S. economy grew over nine percent. If the supply chain 
disruptions caused the inflationary surge, it is worth spending 
some time on when exactly they arose. The 6-month inflation 
rate was already 2.6 percent in October 2020, well above the 
Federal Reserve's target. It exceeded three percent the month 
Biden took the oath of office and was almost four percent in 
March, the month Biden signed the American Rescue Plan. A look 
at more granular supply chain indicators, like the New York 
Fed's Global Supply Chain Pressure Index, and the number of 
ships waiting to dock outside the ports of L.A. and Long Beach 
similarly indicate that these disruptions preceded the Biden 
Administration.
    Policymakers should celebrate the achievement of bringing 
down inflation back toward the Fed's two-percent target without 
a recession, essentially a soft landing, but unfortunately, 
some are trying to immediately reverse that progress of 
reducing inflation. Former President Trump has proposed a 10-to 
20-percent tax on every imported good entering the country, and 
a 60-percent tax of every imported good from China. I have 
estimated that this could lead to a $3,900 tax increase for a 
typical family.
    My analysis is in line with several other think tanks, 
including conservative ones like the Tax Foundation, $6,000; 
the American Action Forum, $3,900; and the National Taxpayers 
Union, $2,500. Wall Street analysts, including Goldman Sachs, 
Bloomberg Economics, the Capital Group, and Moody's, estimate 
that these import taxes would bring inflation back into the 3-
to 4-percent range. In fact, the 20-percent import tax would 
raise gas prices by about 30 cents per gallon by taxing 
Canadian oil and gas imports.
    Trump has framed his proposal as a way to counter China's 
nonmarket practices, but 60 percent of the imports they would 
tax come from six U.S. allies and neighbors: Canada, Mexico, 
the EU, the U.K., Japan, and South Korea. The Biden 
Administration's strategy is different. It focuses trade remedy 
actions on precisely those goods where it is in the national 
interest to maintain industrial competitiveness, and then to 
align those actions with significant investment in American 
manufacturing. Moreover, it views tariffs as just one part of a 
larger reindustrialization strategy designed to rebuild the 
country's productive capacity and sustain American 
competitiveness well into the future.
    The results of the Biden Administration's manufacturing 
strategy speak for themselves. It helped spur the creation of 
700,000 new manufacturing jobs, pushing the total number of 
manufacturing jobs above pre-pandemic levels, which is 
especially impressive coming out of a recession. New factory 
construction has almost doubled after adjusting for inflation.
    The American economy has weathered a pandemic, global 
supply shocks from geopolitical events, and more. Americans 
have come out ahead, and it looks like the economy is headed 
for a soft landing. Policymakers should seek to build on these 
successes instead of undermining them. With that, I yield back 
the balance of my time and thank you.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you very much for your testimony. I now 
recognize my good friend from New York, Mr. Langworthy, for 5 
minutes of questions.
    Mr. Langworthy. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 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 and 
Harris Administration has forgotten about the 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 have 
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, yes. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Langworthy. Well, very good. Look no further than the 
efforts to mandate, as you said, the types of household 
appliances that everyday Americans can purchase. I think my 
family is on our fourth washing machine in about 10 years. We 
saw a tax on dishwashers, on showerheads, gas stoves, furnaces, 
and several other appliances necessary for our everyday lives. 
Mrs. Onwuka, 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 strained their finances, and 1 in 10 said that 
they would borrow money from friends or families to cover 
costs?
    Ms. Onwuka. Thank you for your question. I think, 
absolutely, there is 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, and so I think we are increasingly seeing 
a lot of families who are making, as I mentioned, that heat-or-
eat existential choice.
    Mr. Langworthy. It is a very unfair choice for our hard-
working taxpayers. On to electric vehicles. Now, not only has 
the Biden and Harris Administration catered to the radical 
environmentalists on appliances, it has also chosen winners and 
losers in what was once America's most prosperous industry, the 
auto industry. Despite prices at the pump reaching record new 
highs and surpassing an average of $3 a gallon anywhere in the 
country for over 1,000 consecutive days, gas-powered cars 
remain a more affordable option for most consumers compared to 
their electric counterparts. Yet the Biden and Harris 
Administration does not seem to care about affordability, or 
practicality, for that matter. Unelected bureaucrats in the 
Administration have levied several mandates, like the EPA's 
tailpipe emission final rule that favors the electric vehicle 
industry and requires Americans to drive electric vehicles. Mr. 
DeVore, according to Kelley Blue Book, an average electric 
vehicle costs nearly $57,000 on average. Do you believe that 
the average American family can afford this in our current 
economy?
    Mr. DeVore. Well, no, sir, they cannot. And imagine how 
much more it would be once the subsidies were removed, 
including some of the imputed subsidies, for example, with the 
CAFE standards that benefit EVs considerably beyond their 
actual fuel efficiency. If these are accounted for, the Federal 
supports for EVs are currently averaging about almost $50,000 
per vehicle.
    And then there is a further challenge with that. If you 
look at the Inflation Reduction Act spending, one of the huge 
areas that was not considered in all of that government 
spending, is the infrastructure requirements to electrify our 
economy. So, for example, you know those little cans that are 
in your neighborhood, the small transformers that feed your 
neighborhood electricity? Well, those are insufficiently sized 
if several of your neighbors buy EVs and they come home and 
plug them in all at once. Those small transformers in your 
neighborhood are going to be overmatched. They are going to 
either fail or the circuit breakers will trip.
    If you then look throughout the economy and look at the 
large high voltage transformers--by the way, the majority of 
those are imported, the plurality of which come from the 
People's Republic of China--you cannot even get new major 
transformers, the high-voltage kind, for 36 to 48 months. That 
is the current backlog to get them. So, the challenge, if you 
look at all of these costs that were not included, we are 
looking at $2.4 to $4 trillion of additional costs for things 
like rapid chargers, a charger network on our freeways, and 
neighborhood infrastructure increases. And sir, that is not 
even including efforts to shift home heating from natural gas 
to electricity.
    Mr. Langworthy. Well, you are really on the same page as 
what I am hearing from my constituents in upstate New York, and 
we have had significant strain economically and with the 
government picking winners and losers in choosing a mass 
electrification mandate like in my home state of New York. It 
has put our future in peril, and that is why so many people are 
choosing to vote with their feet and move to states where they 
have more personal and economic freedom. But in terms of a 
Federal Administration, we are seeing what is happening in our 
dark blue states happening to our whole country. So, it is in 
the American people's hands this November, but I thank you for 
your testimony. I am out of time, and I yield back, Mr. 
Chairman.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you very much, Mr. Langworthy. The Chair 
now recognizes my friend from New Mexico, Ms. Stansbury.
    Ms. Stansbury. All right. Well, I am just going to use a 
few moments here to do a little bit of fact checking and 
overviewing of kind of what is going on here today. So, Mr. 
Winfree--Dr. Winfree--thank you for being here today. I 
appreciate it. I was really interested to see that you are the 
author of Chapter 24, Project 2025, on the Federal Reserve. Is 
that correct?
    Dr. Winfree. That is right. There will be a quiz 
afterwards.
    Ms. Stansbury. Well, you know what? So, actually, I was 
reading it while I was sitting here, and there are some really 
interesting economic theories. So, I am a bit of an economics 
geek, so I was interested, and one of the subchapters in 
Project 2025, Chapter 24 that you wrote, talks about free 
banking, and it is one of the features, and you alluded to it 
in your testimony in terms of sort of returning the purse 
strings back to Congress in terms of the budget process for the 
Federal Government. But as I understand this economic theory 
that you are putting forward around the concept of free banking 
is to essentially deregulate the money market and interest and 
to return banking regulation to the banks. Is that correct?
    Dr. Winfree. So, I do not actually recommend free banking. 
What I do, is I make a series of recommendations for how to 
rethink monetary policy under the current system, where the 
Federal Reserve controls monetary policy through an independent 
Fed, which I think is really important.
    Ms. Stansbury. But is the effect----
    Dr. Winfree. I then go through----
    Ms. Stansbury [continuing]. Mr. Winfree----
    Dr. Winfree [continuing]. A series of other theoretical 
ideas.
    Ms. Stansbury. But Mr. Winfree, hold on just a second. Let 
me just----
    Dr. Winfree. Well, hold on. Hold on.
    Ms. Stansbury [continuing]. Clarify my question.
    Dr. Winfree. I go through it. I go----
    Ms. Stansbury. Let me clarify my question.
    Dr. Winfree. Sure.
    Ms. Stansbury. Do you have a subchapter in your chapter 
that is titled ``Free Banking?''
    Dr. Winfree. And what does it say at the end of the 
subchapter?
    Ms. Stansbury. Just answer the question, sir.
    Dr. Winfree. It says that----
    Ms. Stansbury. Yes. The answer is yes, correct? Right?
    Dr. Winfree. It says that this is a suboptimal way of 
conducting monetary policy. I also----
    Ms. Stansbury. Mr. Winfree. Dr. Winfree----
    Dr. Winfree [continuing]. List a series of other----
    Ms. Stansbury. [continuing]. Let us clarify. So, Project 
2025 is a Presidential transition document, correct? The intent 
of this document, as it was drafted, was to provide a 
transition document regarding policies that you would hope the 
next conservative administration would adopt. Is that correct?
    Dr. Winfree. It is a----
    Ms. Stansbury. That is what it is designed to be.
    Dr. Winfree. It is a book that was published by the 
Heritage Foundation, and when I wrote that chapter, I was 
employed by the Heritage Foundation. I am no longer employed by 
Heritage.
    Ms. Stansbury. Thank you. I appreciate that. Well, I want 
to just point out--thank you--that the stated purpose by the 
Heritage Foundation and the over a hundred conservative 
organizations involved in this document is for it to provide a 
transition document for the Trump Administration. And while I 
understand that our colleagues have been trying to distance 
themselves from it, it is the playbook that was put forward by 
the conservative community for the next administration, and I 
appreciate your clarifications this morning.
    Mr. Chairman, I would like to ask for unanimous consent to 
have Project 2025 admitted into the record for this hearing. It 
is relevant to Dr. Winfree's testimony.
    Mr. Fallon. All 900-plus pages?
    Ms. Stansbury. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Fallon. All right. Without objection----
    Ms. Stansbury. All right.
    Mr. Fallon [continuing]. So, ordered.
    Ms. Stansbury. And I really encourage the American people 
to crack this book open, and you can Google it and find it and 
read for yourselves. You can read about free banking, about 
deregulating the banks, about allowing our banking system and 
economy to be deregulated so that they can do what they want, 
and we all know what the outcome of that is. We saw the huge 
crash that happened in 2008 that devastated our economy, wiped 
out people's wealth, wiped out their savings, wiped out 
teachers who had their retirement accounts completely 
destroyed, people who lost their homes, who ended up homeless 
as a result of it. And so, I appreciate that you are bringing 
these ideas. I am all for debate on big ideas, but we already 
have tried, and Donald Trump has tried some of these policies, 
and they were devastating for the American economy. So, I just 
want that to be clear.
    Now, I want to clear up a couple of other things. Ms. 
Onwuka, I understand that you are here as Director for Economic 
Opportunity, Independent Women's Forum. We had another witness 
last week from the Independent Women's Forum. It is an 
organization that is also involved in Project 2025. You guys 
have a number of contributors, correct?
    Ms. Onwuka. I cannot speak to that, but I do know at least 
one person who did author a chapter. Not me.
    Ms. Stansbury. OK. Thank you. I appreciate that, but I do 
want to clarify that some of the statements that were made this 
morning about price gouging, and especially around the energy 
sector, are just unfactual. The American people know they are 
being price gouged. Go grocery shopping. We see it. We see it 
every day.
    In terms of American energy, the facts do not support what 
was stated here. We have the highest oil and gas production in 
American history has happened over the last several years. The 
reason why gas is expensive at the pump is because these oil 
and gas companies are jacking up the price at the pump in order 
to make more money. They have record profits. That is what is 
going on. It has nothing to do with production, so we need to 
actually be clear.
    And then, Mr. DeVore, I appreciate that you are a former 
House Rep. I appreciate anyone who puts their name on the line, 
but the statement that was made about immigrants who are 
undocumented taking American jobs under the legislation that we 
passed is a statement that Donald Trump made at a rally and is 
just untrue. So, I just want to be clear about that. Second, 
the Inflation Reduction Act is the name that was assigned to a 
bill, that President Biden passed, by the U.S. Senate. That is 
a name that came from the U.S. Senate. So just wanted to do a 
little fact checking here this morning. I appreciate it, Mr. 
Chairman.
    Mr. Fallon. The gentlelady's time has expired. You went 
over a little bit. Ms. Onwuka, do you want to respond briefly?
    Ms. Onwuka. Yes. Thank you, Chairman. Just to respond to 
something that you said, Ms. Stansbury, do not take up your 
qualms with me. Take it up with the Federal Reserve who put out 
the information around price gouging, looking not just at one 
particular industry, but industries across the board, and found 
that there was no marked mark-up increase that signals price 
gouging. It is in my submitted testimony. I am happy to provide 
you the actual source of that, but you can pursue it for 
yourself and figure out where we disagree.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you.
    Ms. Stansbury. Mr. Chairman, I would just say I do not have 
any qualms with our witnesses. I have qualms with the price 
gouging that is happening at the grocery store----
    Mr. Fallon. OK.
    Ms. Stansbury [continuing]. And the American people know 
what is happening.
    Mr. Fallon. I now recognize myself for 5 minutes of 
questions.
    Mr. Duke, you said--I just want to make sure I got this 
right--that when the Biden-Harris Administration took office, 
the inflation rate was at 3.1 percent. Is that correct?
    Mr. Duke. The 6-month annualized PCE inflation rate.
    Mr. Fallon. Yes. OK. And then it recently was 2.3 percent.
    Mr. Duke. That is----
    Mr. Fallon. I think that is what you said.
    Mr. Duke. Yes. That is right.
    Mr. Fallon. I was taking notes when you were speaking. What 
was it in 2022?
    Mr. Duke. Higher.
    Mr. Fallon. A lot higher. Eight percent.
    Mr. Duke. Yes.
    Mr. Fallon. Forty-year high. You did not mention that part. 
I just found that was interesting. And then as far as Project 
2025 goes, I thought this was also fascinating. We had a 
hearing in Oversight, and the Ranking Member mentioned Project 
2025 12 times in his 7 1/2 minutes opening testimony. Then I 
asked the Democratic witness a series of questions about the 
Department of Defense and missile defense in China, and he 
agreed with every single thing that I said, every proposal, and 
everything came out from the DoD chapter of Project 2025. I had 
not read it until this weekend.
    Mr. Winfree, were you directed by former President Donald 
Trump to contribute to or author anything in Project 2025?
    Dr. Winfree. I was not. I have not spoken to former 
President Trump since I left the Administration.
    Mr. Fallon. Uh-huh. What that is, is a document from a 
think tank, and that is what think tanks do, and the Democrats 
cannot stop talking about it. Their orders from on high of 
Project 2025, if you read it, you will die, whereas, in, like, 
any one of those documents--that is 900-plus pages, which I 
have not read it all, believe it or not--that there are going 
to be things you agree with and things you disagree with. That 
is just the nature of the being, but I find that to be 
absolutely fascinating. Also, the fact that everything that in 
the Biden-Harris Administration, when they have economic 
struggles, it is COVID's fault. Even in 2024, it is still 
COVID's fault. But when you have any struggles that Donald 
Trump had, it is they have amnesia about COVID. I think it is 
very interesting.
    But anyway, Mr. Winfree, overregulation has been the silent 
killer of economic growth under the Biden-Harris 
Administration, imposing roughly $1.7 trillion in regulatory 
costs on businesses and households in the last 4 years. To rein 
in these egregious levels of red tape, we introduced the REG, 
the 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 could 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. And it is not something 
that we have experimented with unilaterally in the United 
States, as we did in the Trump Administration in 2017. It is 
something that is a typical procedure that is used in the 
United Kingdom and also in Canada and other of our peer 
nations.
    Mr. Fallon. Ms. Onwuka, 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. Well, these new regulations, these 
requirements, I mean, No. 1, they are cost prohibitive for the 
upfront cost for spending on these new appliances, the upfront 
cost of installing these new things. As I said, it is cost 
prohibitive to many households, particularly those who are low 
income. As I stated earlier in my testimony, low-income 
families spend disproportionately more of their budgets on 
basic necessities. Where is the extra $9,000 to retrofit their 
households with these new appliances? It seems, honestly, very 
elitist to put these mandates on so many households, and, 
frankly, it dismisses the real hardship that they are 
experiencing.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you. Mr. Duke, I presume you would agree 
or you would assert that the economy has done better under the 
Biden-Harris Administration than the Trump Administration. 
Would that be your argument?
    Mr. Duke. I do not know, but I mean----
    Mr. Fallon. You got to press your button. Sorry.
    Mr. Duke. When Donald Trump left office, the unemployment 
rate was about seven percent, so.
    Mr. Fallon. What happened when he left office? Did we have 
a struggle going on at the time?
    Mr. Duke. Yes, we had COVID.
    Mr. Fallon. Was it a global pandemic?
    Mr. Duke. Yes.
    Mr. Fallon. Let us talk about----
    Mr. Duke. As was inflation. Yes.
    Mr. Fallon. OK. Let us talk about the 3 years prior when he 
was President of the United States. He had Administration 3 
years, no COVID. What was the unemployment rate then?
    Mr. Duke. In the 3s.
    Mr. Fallon. Yes. It was the 3.5 percent, which is the 
lowest unemployment rate since 1969, and for African Americans, 
it was 5.6 percent; Hispanics, 4.1, which is literally the 
lowest in history. Do you know what the debt to GDP ratio was 
in 2019?
    Mr. Duke. Lower than it is now.
    Mr. Fallon. A lot lower. It was 100 percent debt GDP. Now 
it is to 124 percent, and do you know what the inflation rate 
was at the time?
    Mr. Duke. It was----
    Mr. Fallon. What is the inflation rate now? You just said 
it was 2.3 percent?
    Mr. Duke. Yes.
    Mr. Fallon. It was 1.8 percent then. So, when you take out 
COVID, clearly the Biden or the Biden-Harris Administration did 
not perform too----
    Mr. Duke. Yes. The Biden-Harris Administration is cleaning 
up the mess the Trump Administration left them.
    Mr. Fallon. Excuse me, sir. Excuse me, sir. I did not ask 
you a question. I was making a final statement. Clearly, the 
economy was way better off when you take out COVID under the 
Trump Administration than Biden-Harris. Every single economic 
indicator proves that. The Chair now recognizes our friend, Ms. 
Brown, from Ohio.
    Ms. Brown. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and you asked if we 
were all better off 4 years ago, and here are the facts. Four 
years ago this week, there were over 750,000 new COVID cases. 
People were being hospitalized in tents and on ships because 
hospital buildings did not have the capacity to house the 
hundreds and thousands of patients. Four years ago today, this 
week, 20,000 people died from COVID-19, adding to the already 
half-a-million deaths in the U.S. alone. Now, this is because 
of the pandemic that people were dying, and they were dying 
alone, their bodies being stored in refrigerator trucks because 
morgues, mortuaries, and funeral homes could not house them.
    People were dying by the thousands, and Trump did what he 
always does. He lied. He tried to deceive the public by denying 
that the COVID-19 virus even existed. And after hundreds and 
thousands of people continued to die, he told them that it 
would be like the flu. It is going to be like the flu, and it 
will just go away. But when that did not happen, he started to 
then suggest that we ingest bleach to deal with the COVID-19 
virus that was killing thousands of people, that shut down the 
world, closed people sheltering in place in their homes and 
closed businesses. That is what that Administration did when 
the pandemic struck in the United States and all over the 
globe.
    So, when my colleagues on the other side of the aisle spend 
their time chasing baseless accusations and providing no 
solutions to the American people, I just get a little 
frustrated because Democrats, when we had the majority in the 
117th Congress, we took decisive action, passing landmark bills 
like the American Rescue Plan that put shots in arms that 
helped people keep their businesses open, that really helped 
kept people from losing their homes and paying their bills; the 
Pact Act, which helped veterans who put their lives on the line 
so that people like me can enjoy the freedoms that far too many 
of us take for granted would get the benefits that they 
deserve. And it does not end there.
    Thanks to the leadership of Speaker Pelosi, President 
Biden, and Vice President Harris, we passed the Inflation 
Reduction Act, the largest investment in our climate in human 
history. We passed the CHIPS and Science Act, investing tens of 
billions of dollars in technology, which has yielded more 
investment from private companies. That is helping to develop 
everything from chips to cars to computers, to all the things 
that we use every day that were on backlog because of the 
pandemic under the Trump Administration. We passed the 
Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, the largest investment in our 
roads, railway, and bridges, where communities like mine have 
been struggling with disinvestment for decades.
    And because of big, bold policies like these, our economy 
is now the envy of the world. Inflation is coming down. Our 
unemployment rate is historically low. Even the stock market is 
at record highs. President Biden and Vice President Harris have 
brought 800,000 manufacturing jobs back to the American people. 
Thanks to the IRA, Medicare was able to negotiate prescription 
drug costs for the first time, lowering costs for our seniors 
and people with disabilities. And thanks to the CHIPS and 
Science Act, America is now on track to manufacture 30 percent 
of the world's semiconductor chips. Just a few years ago, under 
Trump, how many were we supplying? Zero.
    So, Mr. Duke, can you tell us how would you characterize 
the state of the American economy right now?
    Mr. Duke. We went through the toughest thing an economy can 
go through, a body blow, and we have built back better in a lot 
of ways. The employment rate is higher than it has ever been 
when you adjust for aging. Wealth has gone up 50 percent 
compared to inflation, which has gone up 22 percent. Wages are 
higher. They have gone up faster than inflation, and they have 
gone up faster than inflation for the lowest wage workers. And 
so, we have got this remarkable recovery going, and it is just 
really important that we keep it going with the investments 
that the Biden-Harris Administration has made, which are 
lowering costs while creating jobs.
    Ms. Brown. And can you just tell me, former President has 
proposed massive tariffs on all sorts of goods, everything. 
Tariff everything. What would be the economic consequences of 
this Project 2025 Trump plan to raise costs on American 
families?
    Mr. Duke. Sure. Wall Street analysts think it will put 
inflation back in the 3s or 4s. It is low 2s right now. Back in 
the 3s or 4s costs the typical family $4,000, $6,000, way more 
than anything they got in tax cuts from Donald Trump. It is a 
Trump sales tax.
    Ms. Brown. Thank you. There are two very different visions 
of America here. One where we boost, bolster, and invest in the 
middle class, lower health costs, and build an economy made to 
succeed in the 21st century. The other side has no plans for a 
brighter future. Their only economic concept of a plan are tax 
cut for billionaires and largest business, while raising taxes 
on the middle-class Americans by an average of $3,900 a year. I 
know I speak for so many of my constituents that we cannot 
afford another Trump tax increase. I yield back, Mr. Chairman. 
Thank you.
    Mr. Fallon. The Chair now recognizes our good friend from 
South Carolina, Mr. Fry.
    Mr. Fry. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am perplexed a little 
bit because I think the title of this hearing is about kitchen 
table issues and economics, and all I have heard really is kind 
of like the typical Project 2025 boogeyman that keeps coming 
out. I got to hand it to him, I think North Korea would be 
proud of the level of propaganda on the other side, but we are 
here to talk about kitchen table issues, so let us talk about 
that.
    So, the Census Bureau in Kamala Harris' home state of 
California, it is the No. 1 state of people moving out in 2024. 
They have a net migration of negative 10,453. Meanwhile, in my 
home state of South Carolina, we are No. 2 in actual growth, 
and we welcome them. It is a good environment. It is good 
weather, good beaches. Mr. DeVore, do you believe it is a 
result of the high cost of living and regulatory burdens 
inflicted on Californians by the progressive state government 
there that people are leaving? Is that the main culprit?
    Mr. DeVore. Yes. If you look at history with California, 
you go back to, let us say, 1960, the cost of living relative 
to the rest of the country was about 105 to 110 percent, so, 
you know, roughly 5 to 10 percent higher as an index if the 
rest of the country averages out to a hundred. Today it is 
between 145 to 150, meaning it is about 45 percent more costly 
to live in California than in the average of the U.S. A huge 
part of that is a regulatory burden. I mentioned, for example, 
the cost of electricity. When I was in the legislature, we went 
from 8th most expensive in the country, and now California is 
No. 2, only behind Hawaii, which derives its electricity from 
diesel generators and a little bit of solar, and that is pretty 
fantastic when you think about it. This huge state with all 
these abundant natural resources now has the second most costly 
electricity prices in the Nation, and that is pretty important 
when you look at the push to electrify our economy, not just 
the transportation sector, but everything.
    Mr. Fry. How will it affect the cost of living for 
Americans on a national level if we take the California model 
and apply it to Washington?
    Mr. DeVore. It is pretty staggering. So, if you look at the 
study that was commissioned when I was in the legislature, 
looking at, for example, the compliance costs for small 
business in California, just for the California regulatory 
burden, in inflation-adjusted terms today, it came out to about 
$200,000 per small business. That was several times, by the 
way, what the Federal regulatory burden was at the time.
    Now, the Biden-Harris Administration put in regulatory 
policies just in the last 3 1/2 years that more than equaled 
the entire Federal regulatory burden as it existed about 20 
years ago. And so, what is happening with these Federal 
regulations is that by pushing California-and New York-like 
regulations down on the rest of the country, what you are doing 
is you are erasing the interstate advantages of low tax, low 
regulatory states like your South Carolina. You are making 
South Carolina more like California and New York when that 
happens, sir.
    Mr. Fry. Exactly. Thank you. I want to switch to energy 
independence for a second. 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 are actually an energy leader in the world?
    Mr. DeVore. That is a great question. Of course, you need 
to open up Federal lands again for exploration and for energy 
extraction. I do not know if it can be undone, but certainly 
the Keystone XL pipeline was something that would have been 
fantastic for North America. Fascinating to me, though, that 
the Administration OK'd the Nord Stream 2 pipeline at the same 
time it shut down a pipeline to bring reliable, affordable 
Canadian energy into America. So, those two things right off 
the bat.
    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 that they are giving an incentive to 
unreliable, un-dispatchable power, and when you have power 
grids, as we have seen in California and as we have begun to 
see in Texas that over rely on wind and solar, what ends up 
happening is those power grids become unstable. You start to 
have planned blackouts or brownouts to manage your power 
supply. And last, you have to invest hugely in batteries to try 
to store the energy when it is being produced for when it is 
not available.
    The problem with battery energy, though, is it does not 
provide spinning reserve. Spinning reserve only can happen with 
large masses that allow for your electrical grid to be 
maintained at 60 hertz. Batteries cannot do that. And so, what 
happens is when your grid gets under strain because of a 
natural event, like a snowstorm or a heat wave, or where it is 
not a windy day, your grid is going to be increasingly under 
threat to have rolling blackouts because batteries and wind and 
solar cannot cut it. They do not have the reliability of 
thermal power like nuclear, coal, and natural gas.
    Mr. Fry. Thank you for that. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Khanna, 
our friend from California.
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Dr. Winfree, as you have 
said to Representative Stansbury and many others, you authored 
the Federal Reserve chapter of Project 2025. Now in 2016, you 
were on President Trump's transition team, correct?
    Dr. Winfree. That is right.
    Mr. Khanna. And do you have any role in his transition team 
now?
    Dr. Winfree. I do not.
    Mr. Khanna. In the Project 2025 Federal Reserve chapter, 
you recommend that we eliminate the dual mandate for the Fed. 
Is that correct?
    Dr. Winfree. That is correct.
    Mr. Khanna. And do you still recommend that if President 
Trump wins, he do that?
    Dr. Winfree. I would recommend that.
    Mr. Khanna. And to explain----
    Dr. Winfree. It would actually require action from 
Congress.
    Mr. Khanna. But you would recommend that he pursue that 
policy? And to explain that, that basically means right now the 
Fed has a mandate to lower inflation and also to have full 
employment. You think that what the Fed should do is just focus 
on lowering inflation. In other words, would you recommend then 
Chairman Powell should be raising interest rates until 
inflation comes to two percent?
    Dr. Winfree. I do not have any insight into the data----
    Mr. Khanna. But would it----
    Dr. Winfree [continuing]. That the Federal Reserve has----
    Mr. Khanna [continuing]. If you were to eliminate the----
    Dr. Winfree [continuing]. That they are using to make their 
decision.
    Mr. Khanna. If you were to eliminate the dual mandate----
    Dr. Winfree. Correct.
    Mr. Khanna [continuing]. Do you have a view of what the 
inflation target should be?
    Dr. Winfree. So, I think it should be about two percent.
    Mr. Khanna. And so wouldn't the----
    Dr. Winfree. As it has been historically.
    Mr. Khanna. Wouldn't the natural course be that the Fed 
would have to raise interest rates until they hit the two-
percent mandate if that is the policy and if they are not 
considering employment?
    Dr. Winfree. That is correct, but let us take----
    Mr. Khanna. Let me----
    Dr. Winfree. But let us take a step back. The Federal 
Reserve has a dual mandate. Other large central banks, like the 
European Central Bank and the Bank of England, do not. They 
have a single mandate, price stability.
    Mr. Khanna. Sure.
    Dr. Winfree. Because it is----
    Mr. Khanna. But under your proposal, which I just want to--
--
    Dr. Winfree [continuing]. Because it is something they can 
actually control.
    Mr. Khanna. OK. I just want to be clear what you are saying 
is a future Trump presidency, if he took your recommendations, 
would mean higher interest rates. I mean, you would be----
    Dr. Winfree. No.
    Mr. Khanna. You would have the Fed under an elimination of 
the dual mandate, basically raising rates, meaning----
    Dr. Winfree. The Federal----
    Mr. Khanna. If I could finish, meaning that the stock 
market is going to go down with the rates being raised, meaning 
that we are going to have a problem with unemployment if the 
rates keep going up because you are basically saying that the 
Fed has to be singularly focused on two percent. Am I 
misinterpreting what you are saying?
    Dr. Winfree. The Federal Reserve is an independent, but 
central bank, right, that has a dual mandate from you, from 
Congress. Congress would have to change that.
    Mr. Khanna. But you want----
    Dr. Winfree. The President has----
    Mr. Khanna. The whole point is you want it changed. You 
want it changed and you want Trump to change it. You were on 
the transition team. You have written a whole paper on it.
    Dr. Winfree. Yes.
    Mr. Khanna. I do not understand.
    Dr. Winfree. Yes, I----
    Mr. Khanna. It is defensible position.
    Dr. Winfree. Yes.
    Mr. Khanna. I mean, I think Milton Friedman and others 
would want it, but the American people should know the 
consequences. I mean, what you are advocating is Volcker-like 
policies, but at a time where we have 2.8 percent or 2.3 
percent inflation. Under your proposal and if Trump comes and 
listens to you, what that would mean is higher interest rates 
for the American people until we got to two percent interest, 
right? Isn't that correct?
    Dr. Winfree. And what happened after Volcker was the Fed 
chair?
    Mr. Khanna. I----
    Dr. Winfree. We had massive economic growth.
    Mr. Khanna. I think Volcker did a great job at the time----
    Dr. Winfree. Exactly.
    Mr. Khanna [continuing]. But that was at 13 percent, but 
what you are saying is we got to swallow that medicine today, 
and you want higher interest rates in a Trump Administration. 
Now, Mr. DeVore, thank you for your service. You know, they say 
it is lies, damned lies, and statistics, but I am going to 
throw out two of them because you have so many statistics. Do 
you happen to know the GDP of California compared to Texas?
    Mr. DeVore. Well, of course California is 60-percent 
larger, so the GDP is going to be larger than Texas.
    Mr. Khanna. Do you happen to know the per capita GDP 
difference?
    Mr. DeVore. It is also higher because of the area that you 
represent, sir, Silicon Valley. Absolutely. Chips are more 
expensive than oil.
    Mr. Khanna. Do you happen to know the real wage 
differential between California and Texas?
    Mr. DeVore. And it is marginally--marginally--higher in 
California, although your Gini coefficient is higher than in 
Texas, so you have greater wage inequality in California than 
in Texas because we manufacture more than California does.
    Mr. Khanna. We could, and it is $75,000 to $62,000, but why 
not just say they are two great states that help contribute to 
America's economic growth?
    Mr. DeVore. That is right. One in four Americans come from 
those two great states, sir.
    Mr. Khanna. Thank you.
    Mr. Fallon. The Chair now recognizes our friend from here 
in the District of Columbia, Ms. Norton.
    Ms. Norton. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As 
President, Mr. Trump failed to deliver on promises he made 
during his first term, leaving us with an economy in shambles. 
Even before the pandemic, he failed to grow the economy by four 
percent each year like he promised. He came into office saying 
he would pay off the national debt, but it surged under his 
watch long before the pandemic. Mr. Duke, were Mr. Trump's 
economic promises those of a business genius?
    Mr. Duke. I think as you laid out, he failed to live up to 
them. You know, I think a key thing is that over half of the 
increase in the national debt since 2000 has come from 
continuing the Bush tax cuts and continuing the Trump tax cuts, 
so he directly contributed to that, and apparently, just this 
week he mentioned paying off the debt with crypto somehow. So, 
I mean, again, he is making even more outlandish promises than 
last time even.
    Ms. Norton. Well, the policies being proposed by the former 
President are inflationary and would cost everyday Americans 
thousands of dollars each year. He has promised to pay for his 
proposals by imposing steep tariffs on all imported goods. So, 
Mr. Duke, how much would Mr. Trump's tariffs cost the typical 
American family?
    Mr. Duke. According to my estimates, $3,900 each year and 
then $3,900 the next year, and then $3,900 the next year. The 
Tax Foundation, a conservative think tank, found $6,000. The 
American Action Forum, another conservative think tank, also 
found $3,900. So, I think people across the political spectrum 
agree that it is a huge, real cost that families are going to 
have to pay if Donald Trump becomes President, and he can do it 
unilaterally without you guys agreeing to it, as he stated this 
week.
    Ms. Norton. I would like to talk now about one of the 
Majority's witnesses, Paul Winfree. Mr. Winfree was the 
Director of Budget Policy in the Trump White House. He also 
authored the Project 2025 chapter of the Federal Reserve. 
Earlier this year, Mr. Winfree said of Trump's tariff plan, 
``Ultimately, that would not help the population that he is 
trying to help. It would raise prices, and, ultimately, people 
would be worse off.'' Mr. Duke, do you agree with Mr. Winfree 
that Trump's tariff proposal would raise prices and leave 
people worse off?
    Mr. Duke. Wholeheartedly.
    Ms. Norton. The former President wants to make his 2017 
massive tax giveaway for the wealthiest Americans and largest 
corporations permanent. We already know that Trump's tax law 
caused the national debt to surge even before the pandemic. 
Making it permanent would add another $4 trillion, with a ``T, 
to the deficit, leading us on the path to more debt, and while 
Mr. Trump's tax law helps his wealthy friends, it is paid for 
on the backs of the middle class. Mr. Duke, is Mr. Trump's tax 
plan looking out for everyday Americans?
    Mr. Duke. No. The combination of extending his tax law and 
then enacting these giant 10-to 20-percent taxes on every 
imported good would leave the vast majority of Americans worse 
off.
    Ms. Norton. This summer, 16 Nobel-Prize-winning economists 
signed on to a letter warning that the former President's 
policies would increase inflation and have ``a destabilizing 
effect'' on the US economy.
    I ask unanimous consent to insert into the record that 
letter that I am passing now, and I yield back.
    Mr. Fallon. Without objection. So, ordered.
    Mr. Fallon. The Chair now recognizes our friend from New 
Mexico, Ms. Stansbury, for a closing statement.
    Ms. Stansbury. All right. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. We 
have heard a lot of what I will call fun facts this morning, 
which are things that are actually not fact at all, but 
statements that are intended to advance a political reality 
that just is not true. And I do want to clear up a couple of 
these fun facts again.
    There was some talk this morning about the electric grid, 
its resilience, and the Inflation Reduction Act and how the IRA 
is going to destroy our grid. Well, I invite any of my 
colleagues who made similar comments today to meet with your 
hometown utilities because I have utilities come visit me every 
day who are eager to access these resources because our grid in 
many places is decades old. It needs modernization. It needs 
resilience backups. And part of why, unfortunately, in Texas, 
our neighbor state, there was such a catastrophic failure a few 
years ago is because the grid was not resilient, and that is 
what the IRA is all about.
    I also want to talk about the causes of inflation. There 
has been a lot of assertions here that are not founded in 
modern economics. The causes of inflation are very clearly tied 
to the economic disruptions that happened during the pandemic. 
We had supply chain issues. We had labor disruptions. There was 
war in Europe and the Middle East now. We have foreign actors 
that were engaged in price fixing, like OPEC. And we know that 
American oil and gas companies, which are currently under 
investigation, have also been engaging in these activities. And 
we have price gouging by American companies that have been 
taking advantage of these disruptions to our economy to try to 
extract more money out of our working families.
    So, you know, my colleagues made some comments this morning 
about the boogeyman of Project 2025. I want to just say Project 
2025 is a boogeyman. Read it. You will see the policies that 
are being espoused in that document are extreme. If you have 
not read it yet, I highly encourage you to do so. And the other 
boogeyman is the gentleman that hopes to take the ideas that 
have been put there by the former Trump Administration 
officials and others who helped contribute it, who says that he 
wants to be a dictator on day one. He has already told us this. 
These policies are extreme. They would undermine women's 
rights. They would undermine LGBTQ rights. They would regulate 
morality. They would undermine banking regulations. They would 
undermine basic protections for working families all across the 
country.
    So, the reason why we are focused on this issue and its 
relevance to this Committee is that we have a gentleman here 
who is actually a chapter author of the bill. So, we are 
discussing the actual content of the ideas that were brought 
before the Committee, but also because we are here to talk 
about what is going on with the economy and what policies are 
going to advance the American people.
    I think it is very clear when you look at the data, and you 
talk to Americans, and we look at our own individual ways in 
which the last several years have improved just our general 
quality of life. The Biden-Harris Administration helped to save 
our economy from freefall with the American Recovery Plan. They 
put into place a vision that is rebuilding the American economy 
over the next several decades, that is building infrastructure 
all across this country, that is creating millions of jobs, 
that is making Made in America manufacturing back in America, 
that is securing our national security. And that is helping 
veterans, low-income families, tribal communities, people of 
color, families. It is an agenda that is lifting up Americans.
    So, I appreciate the focus on these issues today. Kitchen 
table economics are important to all of us, and with that, I 
yield back. Thank you.
    Mr. Fallon. Thank you. You know, going into this hearing, I 
do not think any American would be surprised that Republicans 
would say that the economy is not as good as it should be or 
could be and it is, in fact bad, where Democrats were going to 
come up to the dais and say how awesome things were and how 
great everything is, and there are rainbows and unicorns and 
leprechauns throwing out gold coins. But the fact of the matter 
is, you know, when you look at the Democrats, and they had a 
Majority in the first 2 years that I had served in Congress 
from 2021 to 2023, they had unified government. They are going 
to claim they did magnificent things through massive government 
spending because, as they will claim, it cures all ills. And 
then we have some things, you know, statistics and have to be 
wary of people that want to cook the books.
    For instance, the Minority witness said that wages have 
increased by 27 percent and inflation has only gone up 20 
percent, so what is problem, but the devil is in the details 
because he was talking about overall payroll. Because there are 
more people on the payroll, there are more people employed. The 
employment pool itself has expanded. He was not talking about 
per capita, very, very important distinction.
    And then we have some of our friends on the other side of 
the aisle blame President Trump, because, you know, when COVID 
hit America in 2020, all the deaths were his fault because he 
wanted people to swallow bleach, which is another one of those 
lies. And then they said, ``because we put shots in people's 
arms,'' was the quote. Well, who is responsible for Operation 
Warp Speed? It was President Donald Trump. He was the one that 
said we are going to get this vaccine and we are going to 
essentially warp speed it. And he was mocked. He was 
ridiculed--``you cannot possibly get a vaccine that works that 
quickly''--and yet they did. And in 2020, undeniable fact, 
unfortunately, we lost 350,831 Americans to COVID. In 2022, we 
lost over 460,000 Americans to COVID. More people died of COVID 
in 2021 under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but the right does 
not blame them for the deaths because it was the virus that 
killed those people, so it was propaganda and more drivel.
    And any economic struggle under the Biden-Harris 
Administration is due to COVID. Even in 2024, they are still 
saying we are recovering from it. But any dark clouds that 
President Trump had in 2020, they just have amnesia about COVID 
at all and certainly want to forget, as I mentioned earlier, 
how well the economy was doing in the first 3 years of the 
Trump Administration. The debt-to-GDP ratio was significantly 
lower. Unemployment was at all-time lows across every 
demographic you can mention, and inflation was only at 1.8 
percent.
    Now here is another important distinction because these are 
pesky facts. According to the Census Bureau, not fun fact, yes, 
real median income household income in 2019 was $68,703. 
Inflation went up 21.8 percent from that point to today, 2023 
rather. In 2023, that would have meant that if real household 
median income kept pace with inflation, that would be $83,543. 
But in point of fact, it is now $80,610, which is $2,933 less 
than it should be, almost 4 percent less in real wages. That is 
just an inconvenient truth that our friends on the other side 
of the aisle don't want to discuss. That is $3,000 less, and to 
a family household, that is a big deal.
    So, this is a question that I really would encourage every 
American to ask themselves, are you better off now than you 
were 4 years ago? When you look at the economy, if you just 
look at economics and you ask the American people, who can 
handle the economy better: Kamala Harris, a person that has 
never signed the front of one paycheck; or a successful 
businessman, Donald Trump. According to The New York Times, a 
recent poll, Trump wins that argument 54 to 41, CNBC 40 to 21 
and NBC 50 to 41. Now, these are not, by any measure, 
conservative outlets. So, if you have just that issue, 
President Trump would win in a landslide.
    That is why you hear our friends across the aisle talking 
about everything else but the economy when they are out on the 
campaign trail--abortion, Project 2025, the Russia hoax--and 
then they will misquote, as Kamala Harris did in the debate, 
saying he said that if he does not win, there is going to be a 
bloodbath. He was referring to the auto industry and how they 
would have an economic bloodbath. That is just intellectually 
dishonest, and if the right did that, I would be upset as well 
because that is taking things completely out of context.
    And then we heard it twice up here about bleach. ``You 
wanted people to swallow bleach.'' I think every 6-year-old 
knows, you swallow bleach, it is not going to be a good 
outcome. Again, twisting words. `Dictator on day one'--all that 
kind of stuff. And that is why they do not want you to talk and 
think about the kitchen table economics, because it does not 
bode well for them. It will be a landslide if this election is 
decided on that front. You talk about California and Texas, our 
two biggest states----
    Ms. Stansbury. Mr. Chairman, I just want to remind you that 
we are on official property. This is not a campaign.
    Mr. Fallon. I am not campaigning at all. I am talking 
about----
    Ms. Stansbury. We should not be talking about----
    Mr. Fallon. I am talking about----
    Ms. Stansbury [continuing]. Campaigns here in this setting. 
Thank you.
    Mr. Fallon. I did not tell any American to vote one way or 
the other. I want them all to participate. I want them to 
participate in the election. I want their voices to be heard. 
This is a representative republic, and when you want to compare 
California to Texas, people do vote with their feet. California 
has got this whether----
    Ms. Stansbury. Mr. Chairman, I want to remind you that we 
are on government property and using government property for 
electoral politics is not appropriate.
    Mr. Fallon. This is ridiculous. I am not talking about 
anything. I am talking about California and Texas. Do you 
realize there is a state called California? It is in the 
Pacific. It is just south of Oregon. It is just west of Nevada. 
Lots of people live there. In fact, I have been there. They 
have beautiful weather and topography, and yet they are 
bleeding jobs, prosperity, and opportunity. Fact: they lost an 
electoral vote for the first time in their history. That is a 
fact. Texas gained two electoral votes, and I do not think 
people move to Texas for our majestic mountain vistas. I do not 
think people move to Texas for our world class beaches or our 
refreshingly cool August afternoons. I think they move there 
because of the promise of opportunity and prosperity and 
liberty and promise and hope.
    So, I think the American people, come the next 6 weeks, and 
I hope you would agree you would want everybody that is 
American citizen over the age of 18 years old to participate in 
our election cycle in our representative republic. And if they 
focus on kitchen table economics, I think it will be a decisive 
landslide for one of the candidates.
    And in closing, I want to thank our witnesses again for 
your testimony today. Thank you.
    With that, and without objection, all Members will have 5 
legislative days within which to submit materials and to submit 
additional written questions for the witnesses, which will be 
forwarded to the witnesses for their response.
    Mr. Fallon. If there is no further business, without 
objection, the Subcommittee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:36 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]