Members of Congress from both parties sounded the alarm Thursday after new data showed inflation hit a 40-year high in January.

Moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who cited fears about the impact on inflation when he torpedoed President Biden’s $2 trillion social spending bill in December, said in a statement that families across America are paying the “inflation tax.”

“Inflation taxes are draining the hard-earned wages of every American, and it’s causing real and severe economic pain that can no longer be ignored,” Manchin said. 

“It’s beyond time for the Federal Reserve to tackle this issue head-on, and Congress and the administration must proceed with caution before adding more fuel to an economy already on fire.” 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the Senate floor Thursday that price spikes “are crushing the American people.”

“Experts had predicted another red-hot inflation report, around 7 percent. Even that alone would have meant we were still trapped inside the worst inflation in 40 years. But reality turned out to be even worse than that,” he said. “It turns out inflation this past year hasn’t been 7 percent. It’s been 7½ percent.

“In other words,” McConnell added, “if you haven’t personally gotten a pay raise of 8 percent or more in the last year, then Democrats’ policies have given you a pay cut.”

“This is not about financial inconvenience for wealthy people who can afford to stomach it,” the top Senate Republican went on. “This is about massive price increases for essential goods that make up a huge share of working families’ budgets … This all-Democrat government was warned their radical agenda would supercharge inflation and they pushed ahead anyway. And our country is paying the price.”

Throughout the day Thursday, House Republicans tweeted remembrances of 1982, the last time inflation reached at least 7.5 percent.

“The last time inflation surged this high: -Michael Jackson released ‘Thriller’ -E.T. was first released in theaters -The Weather Channel first aired on cable television,” remembered Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.). “What will it take for President Biden to address this crisis?”

“The last time inflation was this high in 1982, I was in high school,” recalled Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC), who posted a picture of himself in a football uniform. “#Bidenflation is a tax on all Americans, has increased each month of Biden in office, and will cost U.S. households an estimated $3,500 this year. Americans cannot afford a Joe Biden presidency.”

In contrast to the warnings from Manchin and McConnell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) continued to push Biden’s Build Back Better plan in a so-called “Dear Colleague” letter to members of her caucus Wednesday.

“Our Democratic Caucus has designed our House-passed Build Back Better Act to be a crucial tool in the fight against inflation: reducing the deficit for our country while creating jobs and lowering costs for our families,” she wrote. “As 17 Nobel Prize-winning economists have explained: ‘Because this agenda invests in long-term economic capacity and will enhance the ability of more Americans to participate productively in the economy, it will ease longer-term inflationary pressures.’”

Biden himself acknowledged in a statement Thursday morning that “while today is a reminder that Americans’ budgets are being stretched in ways that create real stress at the kitchen table, there are also signs that we will make it through this challenge.”

Thursday’s figures were released almost seven months after Biden pronounced that price increases “are expected to be temporary” and were associated with “transitory effects” of the COVID-19 pandemic.