Political Quotes

“Mr. President, for months now I have been coming to the floor to talk about an issue that I know the American people want us to talk about, and that is the economy and the importance of growing our economy. I am highlighting what unfortunately has been a very anemic record of economic growth over the last 10 years, highlighting what is called the gross domestic product for the United States. I have been doing that because certainly the Obama administration doesn't want to do that. When we look at these numbers, we know that these are some of the weakest economic numbers, certainly in the last 7 years--some of the weakest economic numbers in U.S. history. The media doesn't want to talk about it, so I believe it is important that we come and have a debate on the economy because the American people want us to talk about this. I want to remind my colleagues that the gross domestic product--what we have here on this chart--is really a marker of the health of our economy. It is a marker of progress, a marker of the American dream. Right now we have a sick economy by any measure. Last quarter the U.S. economy grew at 0.8 percent GDP growth--barely grew. To put that in perspective, what has made our country great year after year, decade after decade, has been an economic growth rate of about 3.7 percent, almost 4 percent. If you look at this chart, it has many different administrations. This red line is the 3-percent GDP marker, which is considered OK, not great.…”