Mike Cloud: “I appreciate being here, and I thank the gentleman for leading this. This is such an important topic. We have seen…”

“I appreciate being here, and I thank the gentleman for leading this. This is such an important topic. We have seen ourselves in the last year and a half go from the greatest economy the world has ever seen to very perilous times for the American people. Some of it not of our choosing; some of it, unfortunately, of our choosing. About a year and a half ago I would ask in virtually every meeting I went to in my district throughout Texas, I would ask every industry: What is your biggest problem right now? And they would tell us: We can't find enough people. Now, the reason was very different a year and a half ago than it is today. I get the same answer, but for very different reasons. A year and a half ago the economy was doing so good. Businesses were booming. We were hiring. Wages were growing across every demographic. Now it is because we are paying people to stay home. This is an attack against the American worker, against the American economy, against the American work ethic that took us from struggling Colonies to an amazing, amazing influence on the world stage, to the greatest economy ever in all of humanity. Now, what is really troubling is to see the attack against the American worker that this administration has chosen to pick out, certain industries that were very strong for us, particularly the energy industry. We have seen pipelines shut down here, while pipelines are encouraged to be built in our adversarial nations.…”