Statement

Congressman Rick Berg today released the following statement on the third anniversary of President Obama signing into law his failed trillion-dollar "stimulus" bill:

"In 2009, the President promised that his "stimulus' bill would keep unemployment below eight percent. But the results are clear. President Obama's Washington way of doing things has led to three straight years of unemployment above 8 percent, record deficits and debt, and an enormous cloud of uncertainty that hangs over American families and small businesses.

"To get our country back on track, President Obama and Congressional leaders need to abandon the failed Washington approach, and instead embrace what we know has worked here in North Dakota. Results speak for themselves. Unlike President Obama's approach, in North Dakota we know that jobs come from small business, not big government--and as a result, our state is a national leader in job growth and has the lowest unemployment rate in the nation. To get our economy back on track and Americans back to work, the President should look to North Dakota and adopt our common sense solutions that have removed job-killing regulatory barriers, encouraged energy production, and provided small business with the needed certainty to create jobs and grow the economy."

Three years ago, the Obama administration released projections that unemployment would not break 8 percent if Congress passed the stimulus. The President's projections also showed the passage of the stimulus would result in unemployment rates no higher than 6.4 percent during the first quarter of 2012--2 percent less than unemployment sits today, three years after the passage of Obama's failed stimulus. Today, 12.8 million Americans are still out of work, and an additional 11 million are either underemployed or have stopped looking for work altogether.