On the recordSeptember 24, 2015
America's voters sent the 114th Congress to Washington to help turn around this Nation's struggling economy. For more than 6\1/2\ long years, America's families and workers have been waiting for the Obama administration to join with Congress to pass measures that will adequately restore jobs and growth to our land. The job clearly has not been finished. Throughout the Obama administration, America's growth rate has been historically anemic. The truest measure of unemployment--the rate that includes both discouraged workers and those who cannot find a full-time job--remains over 10 percent. Our labor force participation rate remains mired among historic lows. Median real household income, meanwhile, is 5 percent lower than in June 2009, when the recession officially ended. Median incomes are supposed to rise during economic recoveries, not fall. The Obama administration has managed to buck the historical trend. However, the President at least pays lip service to the need to unleash construction projects. If one thinks back to the start of the Obama administration, one can remember President Obama's plan to solve the Great Recession with the nearly $1 trillion stimulus bill. The stimulus was supposed to work, according to the President, because America had shovel-ready projects from which new, good-paying jobs would be created once the stimulus was enacted and the money was doled out.…





