State of the Economy

Floor Speech

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Mr. BEYER. Madam Speaker, I want to thank Majority Leader Hoyer for his exemplary leadership and thank the distinguished chair of the Ways and Means Committee, Richard Neal, for his friendship and his wise counsel.

Madam Speaker, you be the judge.

Two weeks ago, the World Economic Forum held its annual conference in Davos, and the central theme of the meeting this year was climate change, the most critical issue we face.

President Trump spoke at the conference, but instead of focusing on climate change, he made what amounts to a campaign speech, claiming that he has worked a miracle with the U.S. economy. The fundamental basis of his argument is wildly wrong. He claimed that the economy he inherited from Barack Obama was ``in dismal shape.'' On the basis of this fundamental rewriting of history, he claimed credit for the strong U.S. economy.

The economy is booming, he proposed, not because Barack Obama helped dig us out from the worst recession since the Great Depression or because of the hard work and ingenuity of the American worker, but because of Donald Trump's magical touch, the same magical touch he had with his Atlantic City casinos which went bankrupt, and Trump Shuttle and Trump University and Trump Mortgage and Trump Steaks and the Trump board game and Trump Vodka.

That is quite a record.

I am a businessman. With my brother, my sister, my dad, we spent 46 years now building a highly successful company. And I know it is not easy, but I also know that when a businessman has a string of spectacular failures, you wouldn't hire him to be CEO of your company, let alone President of the United States.

But here we are. Serendipitously, with much luck, I became vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee recently, and I couldn't be more thrilled by the confidence of my Democratic leadership and the opportunity to serve.

The Joint Economic Committee studies and advises Members of Congress about the economy. We are like the economic think tank for the economy to delve into the issues and, when necessary, to set the record straight.

So, when the President stands up at Davos and claims that he is an economic miracle worker, supposedly saving the economy from what he claims is the disaster he inherited, the Joint Economic Committee has to step up to the plate. I was more than pleased when Majority Leader Hoyer asked me to help lead this hour of discussion. So, today, we will talk about the supposedly dismal economy.

Was it a wreck, as the President imagines it? Far from it.

Has he worked miracles with the economy? No way. The data shows that this is not true.

Did his tax cuts supercharge the economic growth? Very weak evidence.

And did his tax cuts pay for themselves? Again, no way.

Has the President's trade war helped American businesses and consumers? We will argue it has done much more harm than good.

And The Washington Post Fact Checker found that, during his Presidency, Donald Trump has made more than 1,500 lies or misleading statements about the economy, and he brazenly repeats them even when corrected.

I suspect, next week, in this very Chamber, when he gives the State of the Union Address, we will hear many of those same misleading claims again.

Madam Speaker, when you hear him make a claim about almost anything, you can pretty much know, more often than not, that it is not true.

So, in his Davos speech at the World Economic Forum, when he said that the economy he inherited from Barack Obama was dismal, he also said: ``We have the greatest economy we've ever had in the history of our country.''

This claim and many others did not make it by the fact checkers at the Associated Press. This isn't unusual. He is often caught red- handed, in flagrante delicto, making easily debunked claims on a wide range of topics. And since the beginning of his administration, his record of falsehoods is astonishing.

The Washington Post Fact Checker says Trump has made over 16,000 false or misleading claims in his first 3 years of office. When you hear this President say almost anything about the economy, it is likely to be more wrong than right.

For example, he did not create a strong economy; he inherited it. This is made absolutely clear in a rigorous, carefully sourced new report by the Democratic staff on the Joint Economic Committee. This is what the report shows: that the economy Donald Trump inherited from Barack Obama was strong and getting stronger.

Madam Speaker, you can see this on the chart right here. Unemployment was below 5 percent, GDP growth was 2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016, and 227,000 jobs were being created every month.

President Obama led the economy a very long way back from the economic records that he inherited from his predecessor. Here is how bad it was.

At the worst of the Great Recession, unemployment had reached 10 percent, but by the time President Obama left office, unemployment had already been cut more than in half, down to 4.7 percent.

When he took office, the economy was hemorrhaging 700,000 jobs per month. By the time he left, the economy had already added jobs for 76 straight months, the longest in American history.

Inflation was low. Wages and incomes were rising. It was a remarkable turnaround. It was not, as the President said at Davos, dismal.

The President called the current economy a miracle due to his golden touch, but, no, he inherited this from the previous economy.

So let's thank the President, but not this President. Let's thank my old boss, President Obama.

The President often cherry-picks a strong month of job growth and implies that it is representative, but let's look at things in the long term, which is how economists actually measure these things.

In the first 35 months of the Trump administration, his economy added 191,000 jobs per month. In the last 35 months of Barack Obama, his economy added 227,000 jobs per month. That is a 36,000 job-per-month difference over a comparable 35 months each. Donald Trump wants you to forget that, but let's not let him get away with it.

The job market is strong. Unemployment is 3.5 percent. But, again, he didn't create low unemployment; he inherited it, and you can see that in the long-term trends. It was at 4.7 percent; now it is down to 3.5.

But his signature policy impact, the $1.9 trillion in tax cuts, didn't go into effect until 2018. So unemployment had already dropped to 4.1--that is the Obama effect, the 4.1. So the last six-tenths of a percent cost us $1.9 trillion, and it might be much higher than that.

Madam Speaker, was the cost worth it? Is the President an economic genius? You be the judge.

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