Jim Saxton: “I take this time to talk a little bit about this Nation's economy. I have had the privilege during this 2 years of…”

“I take this time to talk a little bit about this Nation's economy. I have had the privilege during this 2 years of serving in the House as the chairman of the Joint Economic Committee. The Joint Economic Committee, as all the Members know, is made up of both Members of this House as well as Members of the other house, and it is essentially our job to try and determine what it is that is happening right with the economy, and how the activities that take place from time to time in this House and in the other house and in the administration and in the Federal Reserve, what kind of influence, both positive and negative, those agencies have on our economy, on job growth, on wage levels and all of the other aspects of economic life in the United States. I might say that some of these issues are from time to time very difficult to deal with because they have to do with taxes, they have to do with spending, they have to do with interest rates, they have to do with regulations that the Federal Government through our bureaucratic departments promulgates from time to time, and we have learned through studies in the Joint Economic Committee and other places that these issues that we deal with in the U.S. Government have a very direct and sometimes dramatic effect, sometimes positively and sometimes negatively, on our economy and jobs and wage scales and other issues that have to do with job stability and price stability and all of those kinds of things.”