On the recordMarch 25, 2015
For my friend from Texas, thank you. It is actually a joy being on this committee. It is fascinating the access to data. It is also fascinating how the data sort of gets, as you have already heard here in the first few minutes, sort of politicized by some of us almost to the edge of fantasy. Remember, if we step back to 2011, if we look at the President's own economic graphs, we were going to see economic GDP expansion approaching 5 percent of GDP. The indicators we were just getting this last week, it is this coming quarter, the quarter we are in right now, we may be about to see GDP of about 1.2 percent. At some point, holding up a board, it says look at the jobs, and then looking at the actual math, reality should hit home. Here is the President's own economic report. If you start to look at the numbers in here, if someone will actually break it open and actually read it, look at the numbers in here of workforce participation, how many of our brothers and sisters out there in the workforce are actually in the job market? There is something horribly, horribly wrong out there. So why do the Republicans so focus, so fixate on economic growth? It is the reality of what is about to happen in this country. In 4\1/2\ years--so right now we are discussing a $3.8 trillion budget. In 4\1/2\ years, we are expecting $1 trillion more in spending. Where is that growth? Where is that money coming from? Look at this slide.…
