Political Quotes

“I come to the floor today to talk about the damage ObamaCare is doing to our struggling economy. After months of unrelenting coverage of ObamaCare's many problems and after Friday's release of December's dismal job report, I am sure Democrats in the Senate would prefer we talk about almost anything else. After all, when you have held most of the power here in Washington for the last 5 years, you don't want to mention the fact that your main legacy is a sluggish economy and a disastrous train wreck of a health care program. This past Friday we found out December marked the weakest month of job growth since January 2011. The economy added just 74,000 jobs in December--less than half of the monthly job growth needed for a real recovery. Some are saying perhaps this is an aberration, and perhaps it was for a 1-month period. But the one thing we can't get away from is that December's drop in the unemployment rate--the slight drop that we saw as a percentage--was driven by nearly 350,000 Americans dropping out of the workforce altogether, driving the labor participation rate to its lowest level in 36 years. We haven't seen the labor participation rate this low since the Carter administration. Had millions of Americans not stopped looking for work since January of 2009, the unemployment rate would be a staggering 10.8 percent.…”