Mike Thompson

The subject of today's hearing, how the middle class is faring in today's economy, cuts to the core of what I view as the key mission of this subcommittee.

Workforce development, career technical education, clearly those are bipartisan issues.

I am very proud, as a Pennsylvanian, particularly, about your success and the success of others.

It has no net benefit to the economy, but we ended up with this much larger budget deficit and higher debt load.

We ought to be working on infrastructure.

That was money that we didn't have. So it was a windfall for folks who were already wealthy, and it did little for the rest of the country.

But those top-line economic indicators don't capture the whole story.

GDP has grown at over 3 percent, lowest unemployment in 50 years.

Too many people want, but cannot find, full-time, stable, good-paying jobs.

We can't find enough workers. Seven million unfilled jobs.

President Trump and my Republican colleagues spent about $2.3 trillion on deficit finance tax cut as their marquee accomplishment under the tax cut bill.

We are on track to have a $1 trillion budget deficit, if not this fiscal year, certainly next fiscal year.

So far this year--and it is still early days, as the tax refunding is just now kicking into gear--it does appear that the refunds are meaningfully smaller, somewhere between 5, and as much as 10 percent lower than last year.

So given that, it really is the best of times and the worst of times.

The economic prosperity we are supposedly enjoying right now is leaving too many hardworking people behind.

What I begrudge is the fact that Ms. Tirado and so many of my district in Philadelphia have not benefitted from those gains.

And to be clear, the Treasury Department has the authority to determine how withholding is calculated.

Withholding is very important, because it avoids the problem of getting to April 15th with a huge tax bill for which many lower and middle-income Americans, would be a very severe hardship to pay.

Semiautomatic weapons are commonly used in active shooter incidents resulting in more people being injured or killed.

We do not need another moment of silence. We do not need more thoughts and prayers. We need a moment of action.

We do everything we can to make sure law-abiding citizens can use their Second amendment rights.

Let me tell you how background checks save lives.

The false narrative that exists throughout social media and other outlets attempt to polarize a discussion at a time when now more than ever we must be united.

I would argue, personally, that the Concealed Reciprocity Act... is also way to help deter more gun crime.

Nearly 40,000 people were killed by gun violence in 2017. Over 1,600 took place in my State of Pennsylvania.