Political Quotes

“I thank Vice Chair Ernst for putting this event together on the floor to talk about the success of opportunity zones and what they could mean for so many Americans who desperately need the assistance in so many places. Without any question, this is a great part of the tax bill that has not received enough attention. A lot of folks know about opportunity zones, and a lot of folks are excited about opportunity zones. I would like to spend a little time talking about the success of our economy and touching on some of the issues that my colleague Senator Braun spoke about as well, those being the importance of workforce development and of making sure our workforce has the skills that meet the jobs of our current economy. One estimate said that perhaps there are a million more jobs than there are people looking for work, and a part of the reason why that is so is because we still need to make sure that we harmonize the skill set necessary to do the work with the skills being taught or trained to our younger folks and folks looking for work. This has been an amazing journey from an economic perspective, when you think about where we are financially as a country. This past quarter we saw the announcement of a growth rate of around 3.2 percent. That is astounding because all of the estimates were so significantly lower. We finished 2018 with a growth rate of around 3.1 percent. Now, we have not seen that acceleration in our economy in a very long time.…”