Political Quotes

“Mr. President, one of the things I have been focused on--and I know many of my colleagues have been as well, such as the Presiding Officer--in the last couple of years in the Senate is coming to the Senate floor and speaking about this issue, certainly one of the most important issues we can be focused on in the Congress, and that is the economy and the economic growth for the United States. What we have here, shown by this chart, is really a lost decade of economic growth that we have had in America over the last 10 years--a lost decade. This chart reflects the gross domestic product, or GDP growth, in the United States over the last several decades. GDP is essentially really a measure of the health of the economy, the health of the opportunity that we have in this country. By any measure, over the last 10 years we have had a sick economy. So if we look here at the 3-percent GDP growth, this is OK growth. It is not considered that great. The average rate of growth for the United States over the last 200 years--what really has made our country great--has been about 3.9 percent, almost 4 percent. Three percent is not great. It is certainly below average. But we have a President-- President Obama--and an administration that is going to be the first President ever to never in 1 year, even once, hit 3 percent GDP growth ever. Let me cite a couple of recent numbers. In the fourth quarter of 2015, we grew at 0.9 percent of GDP and did not even hit 1 percent.…”