Economy

According to a recent survey, 60 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and 71 percent of workers feel their pay isn’t keeping up with the cost of living. The numbers bear this out – 6.2 percent wage growth alongside 8.3 percent inflation means that Americans’ paychecks are worth 2.1 percent less than they were at this time last year. Employers are scaling back their plans to hire new workers and beginning to plan for potential layoffs.

August’s Consumer Price Index shows inflation continues to rise. Prices for consumer goods have risen across the board – especially necessities like food and shelter. Unfortunately, inflation shows no sign of easing, and the National Energy Assistance Directors Association anticipates a 17 percent increase in the average household cost for Americans to heat their homes this winter.

A common refrain I hear from employers across Nebraska’s Third District is how difficult it has become to find workers to fill the job openings they have. As the unemployment rate rose to a six-month high of 3.7 percent in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of job openings in America sits at roughly 11 million. Job openings in the U.S. outnumber job seekers by a margin of nearly 2-to-1.

This week, President Joe Biden delivered one of the most divisive addresses to the nation I’ve seen in my lifetime. Our country is headed in the wrong direction, and those who oppose the Biden administration’s radical policies do so because of our desire to leave a better, more prosperous America for future generations. Like you, I love this great country, and I couldn’t be more disappointed by the president’s decision to point fingers and call names. This is not the leadership we need at this time, and this is not the kind of president Joe Biden vowed to be.

Recently I joined several of my colleagues at a roundtable hosted by the Energy, Climate, and Conservation (ECC) Task Force to discuss proven solutions to help build resilient communities around our country by, in part, effectively addressing threats of storms, floods, wildfires, droughts, and more. Nebraskans have been hit hard by costly and tragic disasters in recent years, and the large wildfires our state has experienced this year require a comprehensive evaluation of our prevention and response policies.

This month I had plans to spend the August district work period connecting with folks in the Third District to hear their concerns and discuss the challenges Nebraskans face. Being called back to Washington for a vote on an ill-conceived, dead-end tax-and-spend package was not on my agenda.

A recession is the worst time to raise taxes, yet here we are again – fighting against a tax-and-spend agenda. Last week, new government data show what American families have been feeling for months now: we are officially in a recession. The U.S. economy shrank by .9 percent in the second quarter of the year, the second consecutive quarter of negative growth. This alarming news should have put Democrats on notice, but unfortunately, we heard no real solutions from them to get our economy back on track.