Dana Rohrabacher: “Mr. Speaker, today we honor former President Ronald Reagan on the occasion of his 90th birthday. For those of us who…”

“Mr. Speaker, today we honor former President Ronald Reagan on the occasion of his 90th birthday. For those of us who worked with him, it is a tremendous source of satisfaction that our former boss is now being given the credit that he is due as one of America's greatest Presidents. Every day it is becoming ever more clear that the long period of prosperity our people have enjoyed started in January of 1983. January of 1983 is when Ronald Reagan's economic policies, especially his tax program, went into full effect. At that point the economy took off like a rocket, and it has not ceased to expand since then to this very day, except for a very short 6-month dip in 1999 and 1992, unfortunately during a presidential election. By the time President Clinton took office, however, the man who now claims credit for this long period of expansion, the growth rate in the economy was already 5.4 percent based on, of course, the strong economy that ignited in January of 1983. My apologies to my friends on the other side of the aisle, but it was President Reagan whose policies led to this dramatic uplifting of the well-being of the American people that we have enjoyed for over a decade now. Most of all, one of the factors that has insured that prosperity was that Ronald Reagan had a tough pro-freedom, pro-strength foreign policy that ended the Cold War and ushered the world into a new historic era of peace.”