Nomination of Peter Joseph Kadzik to Be an Assistant Attorney General

Floor Speech

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Mr. THUNE. Madam President, before I begin my prepared remarks, I wish to acknowledge my constituents in South Dakota who are dealing with unprecedented flooding. We have seen historic amounts of rainfall already in the month of June that dwarf anything we can compare to throughout our State's history. Hail and winds are causing widespread damage across the State.

It is not just confined to our State. There are States in the region as well that are experiencing some of these same circumstances and tremendous damage to property. So I wanted to express my thoughts and prayers to the people I represent as well as to those in other States who are dealing with some of these circumstances, and to say thank you and express my appreciation to our first responders who have been very much in demand and on call the last few days.

THE ECONOMY

The American people are very tired. They are very weary. They are arguably fed up. The Washington Post headline from last Friday summed it up, ``Obama's image hits record lows in trio of polls.'' Gallup, CNN/ORC, and Bloomberg polls all found that the President's favorable rating had fallen to new lows. It is no wonder. Five years after the recession supposedly ended, most Americans still feel as though they are in the midst of it.

It is not just me saying that. The President's own Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen stated as recently as March, ``The recovery still feels like a recession to many Americans, and it also looks that way in some economic statistics.''

Let's talk about some of those statistics. Unemployment has spent the past 5 1/2 years at recession level highs. Currently nearly 10 million Americans are unemployed, more than one-third of them for 6 months or longer. The labor force participation rate is at a 36-year low. A USA Today editorial from last week noted that the ``decline in the `labor force participation rate' is one of the most troubling trends of our time.'' Of course, the labor participation rate being the fraction of the available workforce that is actually working or at least looking for work.

What is driving that trend, Americans so discouraged by their failure to find a job that they have literally given up looking altogether? That is what is driving the trend in the labor participation rate.

Even after accounting for baby-boomers retiring and more people going to college--and this is again from the USA Today piece I mentioned earlier--this translates to 6 million people who could be working or looking for work. As the paper points out, the lack of these workers in the workforce means a weaker economy, lower tax revenue, as well as greater governmental expense.

Young people just getting out of college face a bleak job market. The unemployment rate for young adults is a staggering 13.2 percent or more than twice the national average. The director of Outreach for Generation Opportunity, a nonprofit advocacy organization for millennials, recently stated that more than four out of five recent graduates do not have jobs. Currently, 36 percent of young adults are living at home with their parents.

It is no wonder that CNNmoney reports that young adults, aged 18 to 34, are most likely to feel the American dream is unattainable, with 63 percent saying it is not only unattainable, it is impossible.

Everywhere Americans look, prices are rising. The price of everything from milk to the refrigerator to hold it has increased over the past several years. Gas prices have almost doubled since President Obama took office. College costs are soaring.

Then there is ObamaCare, which has meant soaring premiums and huge deductibles for way too many American families. Being in the middle class was once associated with financial security. With a little prudence, middle-class families could be expected to see their kids through college and to retire comfortably. No more.

In the Obama economy, the future is less secure. Household income not only failed to rise over the past 5 1/2 years, it has actually dropped by $3,500 under the President's watch. Wages have remained flat and economic growth has been tepid at best. Middle-class families are no longer looking forward to a future of economic security. Instead, they are praying they do not get hit with any unexpected bills. They are worrying that they will not be able to send their kids to college, and they are wondering how long they will have to work past retirement to the economic security they need.

In a previous America, low-income families could confidently expect that effort and hard work could bring them into the ranks of the middle class. How many of our parents started out living on a shoestring but ended up sending their kids to college and retiring comfortably?

Today, though, opportunities to reach the middle class are few and far between. Fourteen million more Americans are on food stamps today than when the President took office. Democratic policies such as the ObamaCare 30-hour workweek are hitting low-income Americans the hardest. Many of the better paying jobs lost during the recession are not being replaced. Seventy-eight percent of the jobs lost during the recession were high- or mid-wage jobs, but just 56 percent of the jobs recovered have been high or mid-wage jobs. That means almost half of the new jobs that have been created are low-wage jobs. That is not the kind of climate that enables upward mobility.

The worst part is it does not look as though things are going to get better anytime soon. This week the International Monetary Fund announced it now predicts the United States economic growth rate will not exceed 2 percent this year. That is not anywhere close to the kind of growth we need for a real recovery.

The New York Times reported last week, ``The Federal Reserve, persistently optimistic in its previous forecasts, said in March that it no longer expected a full recovery in the foreseeable future.'' Let me repeat that. The Federal Reserve said it no longer expected a full recovery in the foreseeable future.

Four years ago President Obama and his administration proclaimed the advent of the summer of economic recovery. President Obama claimed the economy is headed in the right direction. Vice President Biden confidently predicted in April of 2010 that sometime in the next couple of months we are going to be creating between 250,000 jobs a month and 500,000 jobs a month. In August of that year, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner published an op-ed in the New York Times entitled, ``Welcome to the Recovery.''

Well, as the American people know, recovery summer never materialized. Four years later the American people are still waiting. According to the Federal Reserve, they are going to have to wait longer. In 2009, the President's economic advisors predicted that unemployment would fall below 6 percent in 2012. Two years later, unemployment is still firmly stuck above 6 percent. The Federal Reserve Bank in San Francisco has suggested that 6-percent unemployment should be considered the ``new normal.''

I do not accept that. Republicans do not accept that. We do not accept 6.3 percent unemployment, sluggish economic growth, and struggling middle-class families as the new normal, because it does not have to be that way. We can get our economy going again. But it is going to take something a lot different than the policies of the past 5 1/2 years. It is going to take the kind of policies that remove families' burdens, instead of increasing them. It is going to take policies that encourage businesses to create jobs, not to cut jobs. Republicans have a lot of ideas about how to get started, ideas such as repealing the ObamaCare medical device tax that has already killed tens of thousands of jobs and will kill thousands more if it is not stopped or restoring the 40-hour workweek so businesses will no longer be forced to cut employees' hours under ObamaCare's mandates or stopping the President's national energy tax which would make it more difficult for American families, particularly low-income families, to afford gas, heating, and electricity or enacting trade promotion authority to open new markets to American farmers, workers, and businesses, and to create new good-paying jobs for American workers.

The list goes on. These are just a few of the ideas Republicans have to get our economy going again.

If Democrats were serious about wanting to help American families, they would be working with Republicans to help us get legislation passed. We don't have to accept the President's economy as the new normal: chronic high unemployment, sluggish growth, massive amounts of debt. That shouldn't be the norm, and we shouldn't be satisfied with it.

Republicans are going to be working every day to ensure it isn't the new normal, and we will continue working until our economy is flourishing again and every American has the opportunity for a good job and a prosperous and secure future. We hope Democrats will work with us toward that end. It means opening this floor of the Senate to legislation that will grow our economy, create jobs, and allow us to openly debate, allow us to offer amendments, something that hasn't happened for the past year.

Since July of last year, there have been only nine Republican amendments voted on on the floor of the Senate--nine--nine amendments in almost a year. The ironic thing about that is the same procedures that are being used to block Republican amendments are also blocking Democratic amendments. So in that same timeframe Democrats have only had seven amendments voted on in the past year.

In the world's greatest deliberative body, the place where we are supposed to have open debate and an open amendment process, Republicans had nine amendments voted on. We could take that as a personal affront, but that is not what it is about. It is about the people whom we represent because they elect us here to come out, represent them, and to make sure their voices are heard in the political processes in the debates we have in Washington on the big issues that are important to them and their families. So when amendments are blocked and this process is shut down on the floor of the Senate, it is the people's voices who don't get heard and don't get represented. That has to change, and it needs to change soon, because the issues are big, and the problems and the challenges that face middle-income families are consequential.

Many of us in this Chamber come here every single day hoping to offer legislation and amendments that we believe will be solutions to getting the economy growing again and to create jobs. Every single day for the last year, at least, we have been shut down.

We can do better by the American people. They deserve better. I hope we will do better, and we can start now.

I yield the floor.

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