Headline: Basic Costs Squeeze Families

In a sadly unsurprising headline, the Wall Street Journal said that basic costs squeeze families. Under a Democrat president and Democrat majority in the Senate, the prices of all the basics in life from food, rent, education, cell phone bills, and Internet are all rising, while incomes have remained stagnant and inflation keeps going up.

According to the Journal, spending for the middle 60 percent of the population by income is in a tough spot.

• Their incomes only rose by 2.3 percent from 2007 to 2013
• In the same period, inflation totaled 12 percent
• And wages rose less than half a percent

That means Americans have less money not just for entertainment and amusement, but even food, clothing, and childcare.

Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer was right when he said that a government overhaul of health care “wasn’t the change [Congress] was hired to make. Americans were crying out for the end to the recession, for better wages and more jobs.”

Meanwhile, President Obama is consistently trying to hobble our energy sector when energy remains the lone bright spot in our economy. The Washington Post reports today that as oil prices are falling, it is the American people who will save. “Low-income households living on tight budgets [are] likely to use money not otherwise sent on gas to buy groceries, clothing, and other staples,” the Post said—the exact type of basic necessities that they are having so much trouble affording in the Obama economy.

Yet as America’s energy revolution is providing most of the economic relief Americans so desperately need, the Obama Administration’s EPA is set to rollout “the most expensive regulation ever” on our power plants and factories.

While Democrats have focused on imposing costs on American energy and enacting a government takeover of health care, Republicans have spent the past years focusing on what remains the public’s number one priority: jobs and the economy.

• The House passed a big jobs package in September to boost our economy
• We have passed bills to improve transparency in the EPA so that it doesn’t needlessly burden the American people
• We have passed multiple energy bills enabling transboundary pipelines, increasing natural gas production, allowing energy exploration on federal lands, and protecting hydraulic fracturing
• We approved the Keystone XL pipeline, which will create jobs and boost North American energy, multiple times
• We have focused on improving competency and transparency in government to cut down on waste
• We have passed bills to repeal Obamacare and passed others to reduce the cost of Obamacare by repealing the individual mandate penalty and medical device tax and restoring the 40-hour workweek

In the coming Congress, the House will continue its focus on jobs and the economy, and we will not stop until Americans finally have the economic security and opportunity that they’ve lacked for so long.