[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12385-12386]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              THE ECONOMY

  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I want to share some thoughts about the 
President's tour today and the last couple of days talking about jobs.
  Well, I have to say, first and foremost, this country is not doing 
well economically. It is just not.
  You hear the stock market is up, and people try to translate that 
into substantial progress in the economy. But it is just not there, 
particularly with jobs. The fourth quarter of last year, our GDP growth 
was .4 percent. By the time the first half of this year concludes, we 
are not going to have 2 percent growth over that period.
  You are not going to create jobs unless you have economic growth. We 
are not seeing it. Wages are down. Wages have declined since 1999 for 
working Americans by virtually any calculation. Wages have been 
declining. Unemployment is up. The number of people working today is 
2.1 million fewer than in 2007. We have 2.1 million fewer people 
working today than in 2007.
  This is the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression, 
there is no doubt about that. But we have done all kinds of 
extraordinary things. We had the biggest stimulus--all borrowed--spent. 
They are going to stimulate the economy and create growth. Has it 
produced real growth or is it just a sugar high, as one of the Wall 
Street gurus referred to it? It appears quite clear that it is a sugar-
type high.
  We have more and more plans from our leadership here in the Senate. 
It is basically tax and spend. The American

[[Page 12386]]

people are hurting. Their wages are falling and so forth. They have 
unemployment problems. So we promise to tax more and we are going to 
spread more money around and borrow more. And this is somehow going to 
put us on a sound path to prosperity, job growth, and wage increases, 
which is what we need. Please note these facts.
  I do not mind the President talking about the issue. I know he is 
using the words ``middle class.'' Well, he should. Middle-class working 
Americans, struggling Americans--someone needs to be thinking about 
them. But you also have to have policies. A speech is not a policy. A 
speech is not tangible, something that creates growth, jobs, 
prosperity, and increased wages. GDP growth last quarter was only 1.8 
percent and has averaged at or under 2 percent since the end of the 
recession in 2009.
  There is a major corporation, a CEO--which is common throughout the 
business--he just said quite frankly: We are not hiring anybody if the 
GDP growth in America is not over 3 percent.
  Well, we haven't had 3 percent growth--hardly had it--since 2009. He 
actually is not filling vacancies still even though we are having 
modest growth and people possibly are trying to oversell that.
  I am just saying that the economy is struggling. It is not growing 
rapidly enough to create jobs. We have record unemployment.
  The Wall Street Journal panel of economic experts expects slow growth 
for the rest of this year at 2 percent or less. They have revised their 
forecast down. The President and Congressional Budget Office a year or 
so ago were predicting higher numbers than this. They are not coming 
in. Now they are revising downward what they expect the economy to do 
in the second half of the year.
  We need more than a speech, in my opinion. After 6 years since the 
beginning of the recession, we still have not created as many jobs as 
existed in December of 2007. Americans are working 5 billion less hours 
than in 2007. Think about that--5 billion less hours than in 2007.
  Some say: Well, our immigration plan--my colleague recalled my 
attention to it--is somehow going to fix that. We will bring in more 
workers, and everyone is going to get pay raises, and unemployment is 
going to be reduced.
  But that is not what the Congressional Budget Office told us.
  At a time when we are struggling to find jobs for American workers, 
many of the unemployed are immigrants to the country, African 
Americans, poor people struggling to get by, and you continue to bring 
in a larger flow of labor than the country can absorb. As Mr. Peter 
Kirsanow from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights said, we do not have 
a shortage of workers in America, we have an excess of workers in 
America. We have more workers than we have jobs.
  The fastest growing type of work today is part-time employment. Over 
320,000 part-time jobs were created last month compared to 95,000 full-
time jobs. They are counting these part-time employment jobs as 
employment. Well it is better than nothing, I suppose. We are having a 
surge of part-time employment, driven in large measure by the 
President's health care policies. It just is. Everybody knows that.
  New unemployment claims, which came out this week, are up. In other 
words, the number of people who are filing for unemployment insurance 
has gone up, I hate to say. There were 7,000 more in July, to 343,000.
  The average net worth of American households is down. Someone said 
recently that net worth was back to nearly what it was prior to the 
recession. That was something we heard based on, I guess, the stock 
market primarily. But another analysis looked at it and said: Well, 
what about the share of the debt of Americans? That has increased 
dramatically since 2007. Once you calculate the debt all of us owe as 
American citizens to the total debt of America, household net worth is 
60 percent lower than it was in 2007.
  It is time for this Nation to begin a serious discussion about what 
it is that is causing our economy to slide and what we can do 
realistically to create jobs, increase growth, get higher wages, and so 
forth. One of the things we should not do is bring in more labor than 
we have jobs for. That is pretty simple to me. One of the things we 
should do is try to bring down the cost of energy, not increase the 
cost of energy. One of the things we should do is eliminate the 
unnecessary regulations that drive up costs and produce nothing but a 
burden in exchange. We need a tax system that favors growth. We need to 
defend on the world stage the legitimate interests of America and our 
working people. We have not effectively fought back against unfair 
trade. We can do a better job of that. There are a lot of things we can 
do that do not revolve around taxing more, borrowing more, and spending 
more. That is what the policies are here.
  We have a bill on the floor right now that busts the budget wide 
open. We agreed to these limits 2 years ago. Senator Shelby, the 
ranking Republican on the Budget Committee, stood firm for the 
agreement levels we agreed to. It was not easy, but we agreed to it. 
Oh, no, the majority has to spend more than the amount that currently 
is limited by law.
  So I guess what I would say is that President Obama is correct to at 
least talk about this issue, but we need to do more than talk. About 
all we are hearing when the President talks is plans to invest more, to 
spend more, to tax more, and to borrow more. That will not change the 
debt course of America. We need real policies to put us on a path to 
prosperity that protects the American worker from unfair foreign 
competition, from excessive labor brought into the country, and from 
too high energy costs. There are a lot of other things we can do that 
would promote prosperity in the country.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Markey). The Senator from Alabama.

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