Political Quotes

“Mr. President, 4 years ago our economy was in a free fall. AIG had been bailed out, and Lehman Brothers plunged into bankruptcy. The depth of the recession we fell into is difficult to understate. With the economy contracting at nearly 9 percent in the last few months of 2008 and nearly 700,000 jobs lost every month, it is not an exaggeration to call the crisis we faced the worst since the Great Depression. Demand dried up as our financial system collapsed, families struggled to pay the bills, and millions lost their homes to foreclosure. Our unemployment rate peaked at 10 percent nationally and 11.4 percent in Illinois. It has been a hard road back to stable economic ground, but things have turned around. Private sector businesses are hiring again and have been for 30 straight months. Between July 2011 and July 2012, the economy added an average of 153,000 jobs every month--about 1.8 million jobs. Compare that to the average monthly losses of 544,000 between July 2008 and July 2009. There is a lot of work still to be done. We all would like to see more jobs created, but it is clear our economy is better off and we are better off than we were 4 years ago. I saw many examples of our economic progress as I have traveled my State. The Nucor steel plant in Bourbonnais, IL, makes rebar and angle iron that is used in construction across the country.…”