Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the budget resolution, and I commend Chairwoman Black on her leadership and tireless efforts. Much has been said about our $20 trillion debt, and I would like to add that we know that that debt can only be paid back with tax dollars that will be extracted from future taxpayers. We debated and passed 12 appropriations bills in this Chamber. As heated as those debates were, they were on less than one-third of Federal spending. To attack our debt, we have to attack mandatory spending. This budget does that. As I traveled around my district and talked to people in my district, I have been pleased to hear that business is good. Businesses want to grow, and they want to expand. But I have not been pleased when they told me that they cannot find employees. So I went back and looked at data. Arkansas has our lowest unemployment rate ever right now, but we have also got the lowest labor participation rate. In the years from 2008 to 2016, we saw a 5.7 percent population growth. We saw a decrease in unemployment from 6 percent down to 4 percent, or 5\1/2\ down to 4 percent, but we had fewer people actually working in 2016 than we had in 2008. We had a decrease of 0.8 percent of people working and a decrease of 2.4 percent of people in the labor force during that time period. We have to put plans and programs in place to get our economy growing. We have to get more people back to work. During that same time, we saw an increase in SNAP benefits.…”