Tom Rice: “I am here to talk about a roadmap for prosperity of this country. I think the elections last week, in large part, didn't…”

“I am here to talk about a roadmap for prosperity of this country. I think the elections last week, in large part, didn't deal as much with Republicans and Democrats as it dealt with a frustration over the lagging lack of prosperity this country has experienced for the last 7 years. I think that there are ways to solve that, that are complicated, but there is a pathway that we can pursue that involves a lot of common sense. If you will look at these charts that I have here, Mr. Speaker, what I have here with this blue line that goes up until 2007 and trends down thereafter is median household income. You can see, Mr. Speaker, it drops from a peak of $56,000 annually in 2007 down to just over $51,000 today, a drop of over 10 percent for the median American family. Mr. Speaker, at the same time, this red line represents the cost that these families incur. The red line actually is food cost. You can see that they have risen from an inflation-adjusted basis of 190 to 240, almost 20 percent, Mr. Speaker. At the same time their incomes have declined over 10 percent, their costs for food have gone up over 20 percent. Then the bottom graph here represents their cost for fuel and utilities, and you can see here that they have risen almost 20 percent as well. My belief, Mr. Speaker, is that the cause of the decline in the income, as well as the cause of the rise in the cost in fuels and food, is largely from policies that come out of Washington.…”