David Perdue: “it is my honor to join my colleagues, including the Presiding Officer, in this brief colloquy about the current economic…”

“it is my honor to join my colleagues, including the Presiding Officer, in this brief colloquy about the current economic results that the President's agenda is achieving. I would like to put it in perspective though. Just a little bit over 2 years ago, we had suffered through 8 years of probably the most onerous increase in big government regulatory reform that we had ever seen. These regulations were so onerous that they basically shut down free enterprise for a decade. Add to that a tax environment that was not competitive with the rest of the world, and the result was that we had the lowest economic growth in United States' history--1.6 to 1.9 percent, depending on whom you believe. Regardless of that detail, it was absolutely uncontested that it was the lowest economic growth in the United States' history. There was no secret behind that. Actually, in 2009, when the last administration started, the economy was at a low point because of the financial crisis. So they started from a very low point to start with. It is more draconian than the numbers indicate. Two weeks after President Trump was elected, I was included in a leadership meeting in the White House to talk about how we are going to achieve the President's No. 1 objective, and that is to grow the economy. He said during the election and, indeed, during that meeting, that job one was to grow the economy. We had to put people back to work, get enthusiasm back, and get confidence in the U.S.…”