Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, for months now I have been coming to the floor to talk about an issue that I know the American people want us to talk about, and that is the economy and the importance of growing our economy. I am highlighting what unfortunately has been a very anemic record of economic growth over the last 10 years, highlighting what is called the gross domestic product for the United States. I have been doing that because certainly the Obama administration doesn't want to do that. When we look at these numbers, we know that these are some of the weakest economic numbers, certainly in the last 7 years--some of the weakest economic numbers in U.S. history. The media doesn't want to talk about it, so I believe it is important that we come and have a debate on the economy because the American people want us to talk about this.

I want to remind my colleagues that the gross domestic product--what we have here on this chart--is really a marker of the health of our economy. It is a marker of progress, a marker of the American dream. Right now we have a sick economy by any measure.

Last quarter the U.S. economy grew at 0.8 percent GDP growth--barely grew.

To put that in perspective, what has made our country great year after year, decade after decade, has been an economic growth rate of about 3.7 percent, almost 4 percent.

If you look at this chart, it has many different administrations. This red line is the 3-percent GDP marker, which is considered OK, not great. Usually, most administrations are above that.

Year after year, decade after decade--Democratic administration, Republican administration--what has made the country great is economic growth. If you look at the Obama years right here, it never even hit 3 percent GDP growth. That is why they don't want to talk about it. When the President does talk about it, he doesn't remind Americans that this is the slowest, weakest recovery in over 70 years, but when he does talk about it, he still points fingers at those who came before him.

After nearly 7\1/2\ years, two terms, this economy is his. He owns it, and he should take responsibility for it.

As Michael Boskin, the well-respected Stanford economics professor, put it: ``Mr. Obama will likely go down as having the worst economic- growth record of any president since the trough of the Great Depression in 1933.''

Whether the President owns up to it, there is no doubt--just look at the charts. These are their numbers, by the way. These are the Obama administration numbers. There is no doubt we have experienced a lost decade of growth that is harming not only the economic security of our country and the national security of our country but--most importantly--American families who are experiencing this. The great engine of our economic growth, driven by the American worker, the most productive worker in world history, is now idle because we cannot grow our economy.

We had more evidence of this last month with the abysmal May jobs report. Again, nobody talked about it. The media didn't talk about it. Certainly, the White House didn't talk about it, but we should be talking about it, what happened in May. The report showed, in May, employers throughout the entire United States added 38,000 jobs. That is in an $18 trillion economy that employs 126 million Americans-- 38,000 jobs is nothing and everybody knows it.

As a matter of fact, today, Fed Chairman Janet Yellen talked about what a dismal report that was in May. In fact, that is the lowest monthly gain since 2010 in terms of jobs, and 2016 has seen the worst employment start since 2009, since the beginning of the Obama administration.

All of this is very bad news for the country, the economy, American families, and American workers. Every economist, including the Fed Chairman today, every pundit, even politicians who understand this issue, know this is a big problem. Yet the President and Members of his administration refuse to level with the American people about what is going on. You didn't hear anyone talking about the jobs report. In fact, right now they are calling our economy the strongest in the world. They are touting the fact that despite this economic jobs report, the unemployment rate actually ticked down. It went down from 5.1 percent to 4.7 percent. They are kind of bragging about that. That is normally good news. The unemployment rate going from 5.1 to 4.7 percent, they are talking that up.

What is going on? What is the real story behind these numbers? Because the people who know these numbers know what is going on. I thought I would try to explain a little bit about why this administration is not leveling with the American people at all. First, having the strongest economy in the world right now is nothing to brag about. The President used to brag about how we were growing more than Europe. That was last quarter. We are not growing more than Europe now. The EU grew at about a 2-percent GDP growth last quarter. As I said, we grew at about 0.8 percent, so even that comparison is not working.

An economist recently stated that bragging about having a strong economy right now globally is ``like having the best-looking horse in the glue factory.'' There is not a lot to brag about there.

Really, the only comparison that matters when the administration tries a spin, ``Hey, we are doing better than Japan or better than Brazil''--the only comparison that matters is this one: How are we doing relative to American history? That is all that really matters, not the spin of how we are doing relative to another country. This is what matters. Again, by any measure, we have been performing very poorly for the last 10 years.

Second, let's unpack the unemployment numbers. The 4.7-percent unemployment rate sounds pretty good, but what the President knows and what his administration knows but will not tell the American people, is that rate from the jobs report last year had numbers behind it that were very worrisome. If we only created 38,000 jobs, then how does the unemployment rate go down from 5.1 percent to 4.7 percent?

This is how. The standard measure of unemployment in this country, the unemployment rate, includes only people who are actively looking for work. That is a term called the labor force participation rate. So if the labor force participation rate goes down, then the unemployment rate will also go down, even if we have a weak economy.

So what happened in May? Why did the unemployment rate tick down to 4.7 percent? That is normally good news. Well, we know it is not because of robust job growth because there were only 38,000 jobs created. Nobody thinks that is robust.

What happened in May--and the White House isn't talking about it--the unemployment rate went down because almost 700,000 American workers quit working, quit looking for a job. Think about that. In 1 month, 664,000 Americans--in 1 month, almost 700,000 Americans who had been looking for work got discouraged. They said there is nothing out there. This economy is so weak so I am quitting even looking for a job. That is why the unemployment rate went down--not a strong economy, not strong growth--discouraged American workers saying: I am done. I am not even going to look anymore. Of course, that is nothing to celebrate, 700,000 Americans completely discouraged who said: I have had enough, I am not even going to try. Think about the families. Think about the workers who made that decision.

Unfortunately, this is one of the dismal, economic legacies of the Obama years. Year after year, as exhibited by this chart, millions of Americans have simply left the workforce. They just quit. This is a chart of the labor force participation rate at the beginning of the Obama administration and now.

Year after year, you can see more Americans say: I have had it. I give up. The economy is too weak. I am quitting, quitting even looking. Again, they are not counted in the unemployment rate.

The labor force participation rate is a rather ungainly term, but what it really measures is the hope of the American worker and his or her family. So we should call it the American worker hope index. Here is the hope index for the American worker.

As you can see by the chart, it has been crashing under this President with his economic policies year after year. Hope has been declining for American workers ever since the President got into office. In fact, it has not been this low since the economic malaise years of President Jimmy Carter.

If you see the right hand here, 62 percent--the Carter malaise years--Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and then the Obama administration years, back almost on par with the Carter years. That is not a strong legacy.

The last time we had an American worker hope index this low was in 1978, the height of the Carter stagflation, when so many Americans were discouraged from even trying to work. That is the legacy we have right now.

The most recent job numbers that came out in May was the day the President gave a speech to a bunch of high school students. To the children, the high school kids, the President painted a rosy picture of the economy. He told them the economy was strong and that he had cut the unemployment rate in half. We know that is not a fully accurate statement. If we had the same labor force participation rate today that we had at the beginning of the Obama administration, our unemployment rate would actually be 9.7 percent, almost unchanged from the beginning of 2009 when it was 10.1 percent.

So the bottom line, the main reason--indeed, almost the sole reason the official unemployment rate has been, ``cut in half,'' as the President said, is because millions and millions of Americans have left the workforce because the hope of the American worker has crashed, and it has now reached the same low levels it did during the Carter years.

The President did also tell these high school students that to create a better, stronger economy, we have to be honest about what our real economic challenges are.

Here, I agree with him. Let's start with an honest assessment made recently by former President Clinton. This is what he said about the Obama economy: ``Millions and millions and millions and millions of people look at the pretty picture of America [Obama] painted and they cannot find themselves in it to save their lives.''

That was former Democratic President Bill Clinton talking about the loss of hope over the last 8 years. President Clinton recently said:

But the problem is, 80 percent of the American people are still living on what they were living on the day before the [2008 financial] crash. And about half the American people, after you adjust for inflation, are living on what they were living on the last day I--

Meaning President Clinton-- was president 15 years ago. So that's what's the matter.

That is President Clinton. He is talking honestly about this economy. That is what honesty looks like. Family incomes have declined during the Obama years, wages have been stagnant, and the economic hope of the American worker has crashed to levels not seen since Jimmy Carter.

I close with a few words for the American people as we get to the final months of the Obama administration.

The President is going to make the claim--and some of his supporters and maybe even Secretary Clinton are going to make the claim--that the unemployment rate during the Obama years went from 10.1 percent to 4.7 percent. They are going to talk about this. They are going to make people believe that somehow this is a great accomplishment.

While technically true, what the President is not going to do, what Secretary Clinton is not going to do, is unpack the numbers to actually tell the whole truth because that unemployment rate decline is due primarily to the fact that so many American workers have simply quit looking for work. That is the full truth.

So when you hear this great number--10.1 percent unemployment all the way down to 4.7 percent--the real number is 9.7 percent. The real number is in this index. The real number is that the American workers' hope over the last 8 years has crashed.

So when the President and the White House continue to tell us that everything is fine, that jobs are plentiful, that the unemployment rate has been slashed in half, that our economy is strong relative to other countries, it is very important to look at what they are really saying. We shouldn't believe that. And the vast majority of Americans don't believe it because they are hurting. They are hurting because this economy is hurting. Millions of Americans want to work but can't find a job. Millions of Americans have quit looking for a job. And, as the President says, we need to recognize that fact and to be honest about it. Only then can we do what is one of the most important jobs this Senate can do, which is grow our economy again and create real job opportunities for the millions of American workers who want to work but have been so discouraged they have left the workforce.

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