Andy Barr: “I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this Special Order this evening. This is a very important topic, and I…”

“I appreciate the opportunity to participate in this Special Order this evening. This is a very important topic, and I applaud Mr. Collins and Mr. Yoho for forming the Freshman Working Group on Regulatory Reform. Regulatory reform is desperately needed in this country to get our economy back on track. We have seen persistent high unemployment in our country for the last 5 years. We got another bad jobs report just last week: 7.6 percent is the unemployment rate. But even more alarming than our persistent high unemployment rate is the fact that we have underemployment in this country. Only 58 percent of the American people who are eligible for employment who are of working-age population are actually employed. Only 58 percent. Yes, we have a high unemployment rate. Yes, it has been persistently over 7.5 percent for the last 5 years. But even more troubling is the fact that only 58 percent of working-age people in this country are employed. That is 5 percent below the average employment rate for working-age people prior to the recession, and that number has been static for the last 5 years. So the question we have to ask ourselves is why is this happening; why are the American people not getting back to work.…”