Political Quotes

“I would like to agree with my colleague from South Dakota, who has talked about the importance of the tax relief and regulatory reform and what that has meant for our economy. We are growing at rates that some have said were impossible. People said: Well, you just have to get used to the new normal. We are going to have the economy grow at 1 or 2 percent. It was 4.1 percent last quarter, and it looks as though we are going to continue to see strong growth. That is because of policies that were enacted here, and I think they are making a difference. I am going to talk about something today that actually is making it more difficult to find the workers to be able to get that economy moving forward the way all of us would like to see because as we have lower unemployment, as we have a growing workforce, we are seeing a number of Americans who are out of the workforce altogether. There is some new data from the Department of Labor and from the Brookings Institution, some studies that have shown that between the opioid epidemic--which is heroin, prescription drugs, now this new fentanyl--and other issues, there are people who are not showing up even to apply for jobs. They are not even showing up in the unemployment figures, and they are at historically high levels--8\1/2\ million men between the ages of 25 and 55, so able-bodied men between 25 and 55.…”