Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act--Motion to Proceed--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, the President of the United States earlier today was in Cleveland. He spoke for 54 minutes, yet he said almost nothing--at least certainly nothing that most of us have not heard before.

It was 2 years ago this very weekend that the White House announced the start of what it referred to as the ``recovery summer.'' That campaign was an effort to convince the American people that the Obama administration's policies to create jobs were working.

David Axelrod, who was the senior adviser to the President, said at the time, talking about the summer of 2010, ``This summer will be the most active Recovery Act season yet.'' Again, that was the summer of 2010. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner wrote an op-ed in the New York Times, and it was entitled ``Welcome to the Recovery.'' Again, that was 2010. Now here we are, 2 years later, and Americans are still waiting for a real recovery. The ``recovery summer'' failed to produce results because it was never more than just a cheap slogan. It was designed to hide the fact that an unaccountable administration had no real solutions.

Instead of working to create a healthier economy, President Obama has offered more excuses, more gimmicks, and more empty promises, and he continues to say the economy is about to turn the corner.

This past March President Obama said things would get better soon. ``Day by day,'' he promised, ``we're restoring this economy from crisis.'' We have heard this all before.

In February 2009 the President said his stimulus bill was ``the beginning of the first steps to set our economy on a firmer foundation, paving the way to long-term growth and prosperity.''

In April 2010 he said, ``Our economy is stronger; that economic heartbeat is growing stronger.''

In January 2011 he claimed that ``the next two years, our job now, is putting our economy into overdrive.''

Now, after disappointing jobs numbers for May of this year, when just 69,000 jobs were created, the President once again promises that ``we will come back stronger.''

It is a shame that our economy doesn't run on the President's rhetoric. Saying that things will get better does not make them better.

Well, the President's record speaks for itself. For starters, we all remember early 2009 when the incoming Obama administration told the American people that its stimulus plan would keep unemployment below 8 percent. That is what they said--it would keep unemployment below 8 percent. Instead, we have now had 40 straight months, 40 consecutive months with unemployment over 8 percent. By now, unemployment was supposed to be even much better because the administration had said that by mid-2012--where we are right now, today--their projections were that unemployment would be below 6 percent if the stimulus bill passed. Well, the stimulus bill passed. I voted against it. Instead, unemployment has ticked up again in May to 8.2 percent.

Last month one official at the Federal Reserve said it might take 4 to 5 more years to get unemployment down to 6 percent, which is where the President promised it would be today. The latest jobs report also said that over 23 million Americans are unemployed or are working at less of a job than what they would like.

President Obama said the other day that ``the private sector is doing fine.'' He said that in a nationally televised press conference, that the private sector is doing fine. He went on to say that it was only government jobs that were lagging behind. Well, I think many of these 23 million-plus Americans who are unemployed or underemployed would absolutely disagree with this President.

Under the Obama economy, since early 2009 we have lost 433,000 manufacturing jobs; 79,000 real estate jobs have been lost; and 160,000 jobs in communications industries, such as wireless carriers, have been lost. We have lost 932,000 construction jobs. These may sound like a lot of numbers upon numbers, but behind each one of these statistics is a person--a homebuilder, a phone salesman in the mall, a real estate agent in our communities--real people who have lost the private sector jobs their families rely on to put food on the table, a roof over their head, and to help their kids get through school.

Many Americans have gotten so discouraged by the Obama economy that they have actually given up looking for work entirely. Those Americans who have not given up are finding it more difficult to get jobs. Even if they are trying to find a job, they are finding that their job search is taking much longer than they ever imagined. Over 5 million Americans have been searching for work for more than 27 weeks. That is over 5 million Americans who have spent more than half a year looking for work. The unemployed now spend an average of nearly 40 weeks looking for work--double the average when President Obama took office. That is the equivalent of losing a job on New Year's Day and not finding work again until October.

So why are the jobs so scarce? Well, it is because President Obama's policies have done far too little to help our struggling economy, and in many cases his policies have actually hurt the economy and made things worse. Contrary to what President Obama believes, the private sector is not doing fine, and the problem is not just that we don't have enough bureaucrats.

Growth in America's GDP for the first quarter of 2012 was just 1.9 percent. That is nowhere near the level we need for a healthy economy. During past recoveries from economic downturns, other Presidents have presided over much faster growth. After the recession of the early 1980s, President Reagan's economy grew much faster. Well, there is a simple reason why, and it has to do with the policies coming out of this President's administration.

President Obama keeps repeating that we face economic headwinds. Well, the biggest headwinds we are facing come from the President's own economic policies. The American

people understand this. They read the papers. Headlines such as the one from the Washington Post on Tuesday, just 2 days ago--``Families See Their Wealth Sapped.'' The American people read about the bad economic data saying that durable goods orders were down 3.7 percent in March. People know that when the manufacturing sector, which is an important source of jobs, slows down dramatically, it does not bode well for job growth in other sectors of the economy.

When people hear this drumbeat of bad economic news, it explains why the Consumer Confidence Index fell again in May. When we ask people if the country is on the right course, the majority say it is not on the right path. When we ask if they think the President is doing a good job with the economy, they say no, he is not.

Confidence is down not just because the American people follow the news and know what is going on in the country, it is because they also know what is going on in their own lives--what they are seeing at home and what they are seeing with their families. For many people, they are not earning as much as they had earned in the past. The median household income has fallen by over $4,000 since President Obama took office. Meanwhile, the actual costs of everyday living continue to rise. More and more people every day are finding that for them and for their families, they just can't keep up.

Today there are more than 46 million Americans on food stamps. That is 14 million more than relied on the program in January of 2009 when President Obama was sworn into office. Sadly, the Congressional Budget Office expects the number to go even higher over the next 2 years. Well, that is obviously the wrong direction, and it is a result of bad decisions and bad policies out of the President's administration. Those policies have contributed to the lower wages we are seeing, to higher unemployment we are living with, and to more people living in poverty. Those policies are contributing as well to the sagging home markets that threaten to keep millions of American families in dire financial straits for years to come. We all know President Obama faced a difficult economic situation when he took office in 2009. His failed policies have not healed our economy. Higher taxes, more bureaucracy, more borrowing, and more wasteful spending by Washington will continue to make things worse.

When we take a look at what is happening around the world, with Europe facing collapse and the global slowdown that threatens our economy, the President seems more concerned with his next election than with actually taking action to make things better. Alongside all the bad economic news, ABC News reported the other day that President Obama will continue his record-smashing fundraising schedule--record-smashing fundraising schedule. That is not the kind of leadership our economy needs today.

Republicans are focused on real solutions: making our Tax Code simpler, flatter, fairer for every American; reducing the debt and the deficit; ending overregulation, the redtape that is burdensome, expensive, and time-consuming; putting patients and doctors--their own doctors--in control of health care and not creating more Washington bureaucracy; and, of course, reducing our dependency on foreign oil and sending so much American money overseas.

Two years ago, when the Obama administration was putting out press releases and staging photo-ops to proclaim the ``recovery summer,'' Republicans were proposing real solutions to help create a healthy economy. When voters had a chance to compare the two approaches that November--November of 2010--Republicans earned control of the House of Representatives, and at that time they started passing a jobs agenda.

Democrats in the Senate still do not get it, and they have refused to even consider these bills passed by the House.

There are 27 jobs bills that have passed the House of Representatives on bipartisan votes. The bills are still today waiting for Senate action.

The President of the United States remains silent on these bills that would actually get people back to work. He is offering nothing but scare tactics, excuses, and blame.

He gave another speech today--this very afternoon--in Ohio and what he did was more of that: more scare tactics, excuses, and blame. Because in his mind, it seems it is always someone else's fault.

Imagine where our economy would be today if Democrats had been willing to accept commonsense Republican solutions 2 years ago. We would actually be in recovery today. We would have seen significant improvements to the economy. If Democrats had been willing to work with us, instead of giving speeches and pushing more wasteful stimulus spending, millions of more people would be working today across the country.

If President Obama had been focused on putting people back to work, instead of on keeping his own job, then today--today--in the summer of 2012, the private sector and the American people really would be doing fine.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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