[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 45 (Friday, April 2, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3619-S3621]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         INCREASE IN EMPLOYMENT

  Mr. SESSIONS. Madam President, I would like to celebrate the good 
employment news we received today.
  I think it is important for us to at least take a few moments to 
celebrate what was revealed today in the March employment figures 
released by the Department of Labor statistics.
  I just left a hearing of the Joint Economic Committee, of which I am 
a

[[Page S3620]]

member. It was held in the House this time. We had the Department of 
Labor statistician give those reports. They were good numbers indeed.
  There were 308,000 new jobs added this month. Since last fall, we 
have added over 700,000 new jobs. These are not vague numbers. These 
new jobs are payroll jobs that are identified easily because these are 
payroll jobs where the employer is sending the money to the Federal 
Government for Social Security, Medicare, and income tax withholding. 
These are really hard numbers.
  For some time, we have had a divergence between the household survey 
and the payroll numbers. Payroll numbers have not been as good as the 
household numbers. Household numbers are a survey of homes in America. 
Many think they are even more accurate, because they ask whether you 
are employed and whether you are working. The truth is a lot of people 
do not show up on a payroll because they are self-employed, they are 
consultants, or they operate a business out of their home. They help 
their spouse or family member with a job. They do not show up on a 
payroll. Also, a large number of people are working here illegally and 
are not counted. That is something we need to get more serious about.
  It is odd to me that Members in this Senate who are most angry and 
most upset about unemployment seem to have no concern whatsoever about 
how many jobs are being taken by people coming into this country 
illegally. We are a nation of immigrants, and we believe in 
immigration. But we also want to know who is coming to make sure they 
are coming legally, they are not terrorists, and that they are not 
flooding our job market and putting Americans out of work who could 
have had those jobs.
  So the question becomes, where did all these new jobs come from? I 
think we can say with some fairness and objectivity with the history of 
our current situation--not to try to be partisan in any way--President 
Bush last year said he believed this economy was not where it should 
be. Our unemployment rate was not where it should be. It was too high. 
We needed to increase employment in America, and we needed to increase 
growth. The way you increase employment in this country is to increase 
growth, so we set out to do that.
  What did we do? We carried through on a plan to stimulate this 
economy through tax cuts for American citizens, businesses, and 
investment. We began to see some real change. Growth began to occur.
  During the third quarter of last year, growth was 8.2 percent. That 
is the highest rate of growth in 20 years. The fourth quarter was over 
4 percent. We expect, according to Mr. Greenspan, growth this year to 
be 5 percent. That is a tremendous level of growth. It is something we 
should be very proud of.
  Economists also say that growth creates jobs. If the economy does not 
grow, if businesses are not expanding, then they don't hire people. You 
don't have jobs created. If you want to create jobs, you have to have 
growth. So we have created growth.

  There has been some concern about the number of jobs added as we 
began to grow. It has not been at the rate we would like to see. It is 
somewhat below historical averages. You would think jobs would increase 
faster considering the highest level of growth we have seen, but as we 
heard in the hearing this morning I attended--and I think most 
economists would agree--the problem has been productivity. Productivity 
has a short-term adverse impact on employment, but it is not a problem 
in the long term. Increased productivity means that a plant, a factory, 
or a business is doing better than they have done before. They are 
producing more widgets at less cost and less employment, and they are 
more efficient. In the long run, that is good. In the short run, it 
could mean an increase in unemployment.
  We have had incredible increases in productivity and this has made us 
competitive in the world market. If you do not have productivity 
increases, how can a high-wage country like the United States compete 
with other countries around the world that pay less wages?
  Productivity is the key to our being competitive in the world market. 
Everybody who is honest and who understands the situation would agree 
with that. But it has caused us to lag in jobs.
  Growth is occurring. Now we see a 308,000-person increase in 
employment this month. It is really good news. I think it is something 
we should celebrate.
  There has been so much political rhetoric going on. President Bush is 
a strong leader. He takes responsibility. He says he is not satisfied 
right now with the employment level in our country, although this 
unemployment rate we have today is below the 20-year average for 
unemployment in America. It is an unemployment rate that existed when 
President Clinton ran for reelection last time. The unemployment rate 
of 5.7 percent is not an extreme situation when viewed in historical 
terms. In fact, today's unemployment rate is less than the average rate 
for the decade of the 1980s and its less than the average rate for the 
decade of the 1990s.
  Let me show you this chart that I think is pretty dramatic. It is 
entitled, ``Best Is Yet To Come, U.S. Picked to Have the Strongest 
Gross Domestic Product Growth Over Next Year.''
  These were economists picking which countries have the greatest 
economic growth this year. The United States is almost 5 percent. All 
the rest of the countries--Australia, Canada, Britain, Spain, Japan, 
Sweden, Denmark, France, Euro Area, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, 
Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands--all have lower growth.
  Whose economy is doing well? Our economy is doing well. Why? We are 
doing better for several reasons. One is we have lower taxes than those 
countries. Another is that we have fewer regulations than those 
countries. We are committed to a more free market economy. That 
produces growth. That is the engine for American prosperity. It always 
has been, and we should never abandon that and move to the Socialist 
state economies in these other countries.
  This is tremendous. How people can come around and whine and complain 
and grumble about the kind of situation we are in now is beyond me.
  This chart shows the gross domestic product growth in the past 12 
months. The United States has the highest growth in gross domestic 
product of all of these nations: Australia, Japan, Britain, Spain, 
Sweden, Canada, Belgium, Austria, France, Euro Area, Denmark, Germany, 
Italy, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. All of those countries have 
lower growth rates than we do. The European Union unemployment rate is 
8.8. Ours is 5.7. Canada's is 7.4.
  Something is being done right here. We are not quite as bad as people 
would like to moan and groan about.
  We just added 300,000 new payroll jobs last month. These are not 
survey jobs. These are people who are on the payroll and who are paying 
withholding taxes--Social Security and Medicare taxes. These are 
substantially payroll and employment taxes. Things are moving along 
pretty well. I have been concerned. I don't think it is fair that many 
on the other side have blamed President Bush because the economy has 
not done as well as we would like and it slipped into recession.

  I will take a moment to explain some things. Back when former 
President Bush was President, he had been in office a year or so, the 
Reagan boom had been going on, and all of a sudden we got into a 
slowdown. A lot of economists know why it occurred, but we got into a 
slowdown. We had negative growth a couple of quarters when former 
President Bush was in office, about his second year in office. 
President Clinton ran for office and said: It's the economy, stupid. He 
said the economy was bad and President Bush would be removed from 
office and he won, to a large degree, on that issue.
  The truth was, by the time President Clinton took office, the economy 
had grown during the fourth year of President Bush's Presidency and 
President Clinton inherited a growing economy. The fourth quarter of 
President Bush's last year in office showed significant growth. So it 
is clear: President Clinton inherited a growing economy when he took 
office. And for most of his two terms in office, the economy performed 
well. I guess he gets credit for that, although I am not sure how much 
any President deserves credit for these things, but they think they do. 
So they get the credit and the blame, whether they deserve it or not.
  So President Clinton enters office and the economy goes along well 
for a

[[Page S3621]]

while. But it was in trouble his last year in office. And during the 
2000 campaign President Clinton and Vice President Gore spent a lot of 
time saying how wonderful the economy was and how much his Vice 
President, Mr. Gore, deserved credit for it, but, this just wasn't so. 
In fact, the economy had already begun to sink dramatically during 
President Clinton's last year in office.
  For example, the NASDAQ exchange lost one-half of its value during 
the last year of President Clinton's tenure and before President Bush 
took office. When President Clinton was President, the economy was in 
trouble. Another fact is that during the third quarter of President 
Clinton's last year in office the economy experienced negative growth.
  To compound the problem further, the first quarter President Bush 
inherited also experienced negative growth, even though the President 
hadn't been in office long enough to have this slowdown occur as the 
result of any of his policies. The fact is, President Bush inherited an 
economy from President Clinton that was already in trouble. There was 
no doubt about it. The numbers I have given are indisputable. President 
Bush's opponents want to ignore them and pretend that these facts did 
not happen. They want to promote the myth that President Bush is 
responsible for this economy, for the economic troubles we had, not 
that he inherited them.
  But to his credit, President Bush has not whined or complained about 
the economic problems he inherited. Instead, he set about on a program 
to get our economy moving again by empowering the American people. He 
did this by allowing people to keep more of the money they earn instead 
of sending it to Washington to be spent by this gaggle in the Senate 
and the House. This President trusts the American people. In a nutshell 
his program is based on the premise that our economy functions best 
when we put more money into the hands of the people who earned it in 
the first place.
  And the President's approach has created this growth we are now 
seeing. It resulted in 8.20-percent growth the third quarter of last 
year. It resulted in significant growth in the fourth quarter of last 
year. It is an approach that leads many people, such as Alan Greenspan, 
to predict the economy many sustain GDP growth of 5% this year. And it 
is an approach that has helped create the 300,000 new jobs we celebrate 
today.

  Things are moving well. We want to see it continue. We want to see 
the unemployment numbers fall, and we want to see continued growth in 
productivity and jobs. In the long run, growth will determine whether 
we are successful as an economy and whether people will have jobs.
  We hear all these things about China and Mexico being a threat to us, 
outsourcing and all these problems, and we need to look at every single 
one of them and be very protective of jobs in America.
  The President of the United States understands this. He understands 
that he is not president of the European Union. He is not president of 
the world. President Bush understands that he represents the United 
States of America. He is working every day to help our interests.
  We have a lot to celebrate with these numbers today. They are really 
good. If we could maintain something close to that for the next 4, 5, 
or 6 months, we will feel a difference in income and revenue to the 
Government. We have 300,000 people now paying money to the Federal 
Government in taxes. One reason we have had a revenue shortage is 
because we have had less employment, so they are paying less taxes. If 
businesses are in a recession, they do not make a profit; the 
corporation does not pay a tax unless they make a profit.
  Maybe we are back in the mood of growth and profitability and hiring 
that will make a difference not only in jobs for American citizens but 
maybe it will also make a difference for revenue to our Government and 
help us get this budget balanced again, which is something I feel very 
strongly about.
  These tax reductions have been mischaracterized. Right now, we are 
dealing with it, as part of our budget process that we need to 
complete. We need to extend the child tax credit of $1,000 per child 
for a working family in America today. The marriage penalty falls on 
working families and the expansion of the 10-percent bracket--in other 
words, people who are used to paying 15 percent income taxes--the lower 
income taxpayers, some pay 10 percent, the middle group pays 15 
percent--more people will be paying at a lower rate. All of those are 
in doubt right now. We need to make that happen, allow the American 
people to keep more of their money, follow the great American 
tradition--not the European Socialist tradition--the American tradition 
of individual responsibility, lower taxes, free markets, less 
regulation, and we will continue to beat the world in economic growth 
and productivity.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from New 
Jersey is recognized for 10 minutes.

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