Over 100 Republican House members signed a letter on Wednesday warning President Joe Biden that passing his unrealistic $3.5 trillion spending plan would be a catastrophic decision for the supply chain crisis.
Rep. Sam Graves, the ranking member of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, led the charge in the letter slamming the president’s proposed policies as harmful to the current economic environment.
“We must address the global supply chain and ports crisis before Congress even considers additional social spending and taxation legislation. Our priority right now should be strengthening our Nation’s economy and increasing our global competitiveness. The policies of your Presidency and party’s leaders in Congress are exacerbating or simply ignoring the underlying supply chain crisis,” the representatives wrote.
“These policies include the mishandling of the COVID response in ways that are prolonging unemployment and worker shortages across the economy, to your push for a multi-trillion-dollar spending spree that is driving up prices of everything from gas to groceries. These efforts only serve to weaken American competitiveness and shrink our economy, and they will certainly ensure that this Christmas will not be merry.”
The House of Representatives already passed the Democratic-backed spending bill, along with the $1 trillion infrastructure bill, so the purpose of this letter is to make Biden more mindful of the consequences during his negotiation process with the Senate. One of the bill’s provisions, for example, is an increase in the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent, which many argue will harm the economy.
“Multiple factors have contributed to the Nation’s supply chain crisis, but one factor that is being overlooked is how the collection of harmful policies being pushed by the President and his party is making matters worse — not better,” Graves said in a news release.
“Policies that encourage unemployment and worker shortages, multi-trillion-dollar spending sprees that lead to an inflationary tax increase on Americans, new regulations and prohibitions that drive up the cost of everything including energy, focusing infrastructure programs on socialist ideals rather than actual solutions to infrastructure problems — all of these policies are causing further breakdowns in the supply chain.
“The President is telling the private sector to ‘step up’ and fix these issues, but the President needs to lead by example, step up himself, and reevaluate his agenda that is making this supply chain crisis worse,” he continued.
Mr. President,
We have to address the global supply chain crisis before Congress considers your radical tax-and-spend agenda that’s making matters even worse.
This crisis isn’t going to go away if you keep pretending it isn’t happening. pic.twitter.com/2vU1Z2ZL8T
— Rep. Sam Graves (@RepSamGraves) October 21, 2021
Between inflation and supply chain issues, consumer goods are becoming more scarce and in some cases, more expensive.
According to KABC-TV, there is a backlog of 100 container ships in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach waiting with tons of products, as the pair of ports is responsible for about 40 percent of all cargo ships entering the United States. Typically, those ports usually house about 17 ships.
These cargo shipment issues have a massive trickle-down effect, resulting in delays in e-commerce and retail.
The policies in the spending plan, which is being held up by moderate Democratic Sens. Krysten Sinema and Joe Manchin, include increasing the corporate tax rate and expanding social programs.
These additional regulations on the free market will only induce additional problems for companies that are already struggling to afford shipping costs, and consumers will foot the bill.
Letters like the one Graves and his Republican colleagues wrote are typically purely symbolic, but this is one worth noting.
Unfortunately, Biden and his Democratic allies either don’t understand or don’t care about how high government spending and taxes would hurt the private sector and average Americans.
This is going to be a rough holiday season for the United States, and the federal government will only make things worse.
Story cited here.
