McConnell: Current Inflation 'Small Potatoes' If Dems Push Spending Bill

If Democrats push their massive spending package through via budget reconciliation, the current state of inflation will look like "small potatoes," according to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday, McConnell attributed "Democrats' high-stakes spending spree from the springtime" to the current year-over-year inflation that now tops 5.4%, the fastest increase in 13 years.

"Democrats rammed through what the White House bragged was the most left-wing legislation in our nation's history," McConnell said.

"And now Democrats want to follow up with [an] even more absurd, summer sequel," McConnell said, referencing Democratic leaders' plans to push a multitrillion-dollar package alongside a bipartisan infrastructure bill.

The reconciliation bill, which cannot be filibustered and is expected to be approved by a simple Democratic majority via Vice President Kamala Harris' tie-breaking vote, features items on issues such as climate action, child care and paid leave.

"What Democrats say they want to force through this summer through reconciliation would make our current inflationary mess look like small potatoes," McConnell added. "Nobody seriously thinks our country needs another gigantic overdose of overborrowing, overspending and overtaxing."

McConnell asserted that Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is pushing an extreme left-wing agenda the American people do not want.

McConnell said Sanders "has been very transparent about his socialist ideology for decades. Very upfront about it. But the country didn't elect a 50-50 Senate and a president who claimed to be a moderate so that chairman senators could turn America into a socialist country.

"Working Americans know that's not what they voted for."

Originally, leading Democrats wanted one large infrastructure bill, but now the White House is working on a narrower plan, with the looming possibility Democrats will use reconciliation as a means to pass the rest of their agenda items.

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