National Small Business Week

Floor Speech

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Mr. KELLY of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, last week was National Small Business Week. The end of the week brought, appropriately, not just good news, but great news:

Unemployment is now below 4 percent for the first time in nearly 20 years.

164,000 new jobs were created last month--24,000 new jobs in manufacturing and 17,000 new jobs in construction.

Nearly 3.2 million new jobs have been created since the election of November 2016;

We currently have 6.6 million job openings in the United States. This is an all-time high.

Wages for small business workers increased last month by 3\1/4\ percent. That is the strongest rate of increase in over 2 years.

All this, plus:

Female unemployment is at its lowest level since 2000;

Black unemployment is at its lowest level ever;

Hispanic unemployment is at its lowest level ever;

Consumer confidence is at its highest level since 2004;

Job market confidence is at its highest level ever; and

Small business confidence is at its highest level ever.

Because of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, since February, 90 percent of American workers--that is nine out of 10 American workers--have been opening bigger, less-taxed paychecks. They have more take-home pay, which means that they get to keep more of their hard-earned money to spend the way they want to spend it, not the way Washington wants to spend it.

More than 530 companies, and counting, have reinvested billions and billions of dollars into their businesses and our Nation's economy. As a result, more than 4 million American workers, and counting, have received major bonuses and/or pay raises and/or benefit increases.

This includes employees at local companies in western Pennsylvania like Erie Insurance, who gave their workers a $1,000 bonus, and then another $1,000 to their retirement plan. NextTier Bank did the same thing, $1,000 to their workers. And PNC Bank, as well. There are a lot of good people who work for national companies, like Home Depot and Walmart. Walmart alone employs 4,000 people in western Pennsylvania.

Energy bills have gone down for more than 87 million of our fellow citizens in 48 States. That is an incredible lowering of their cost of living.

According to the International Energy Agency, the United States is on track to be the world's largest oil producer by 2023. The significance of this is that we no longer have to be held hostage by bad actors around the world when it comes to energy. We will be the biggest exporters of energy in the world. And when we ask other people not to buy from these folks because of their intentions of how to use that money, we can replace what they are not able to buy there with our own homegrown energy. That is an incredible advantage.

Thanks to the most recent National Defense Authorization Act--now, think about this--our sons and daughters who serve in uniform are going to be enjoying their largest pay increase in 8 years.

The facts are clear: America is winning again.

Speaker Ryan was addressing a group the other day, and I want to quote him, because I think this is so appropriate for where we are today: ``We are working on reforms to get more people out of poverty and into the workforce. We need to make sure that workers have the right skills they need to get a job and a good career.''

I am talking about a family-sustaining career, a community-building career, a career that actually allows us to dream.

Right now, our economy is thriving. Americans are right to feel good about how things are going. We have not seen those kinds of optimistic statistics in such a long, long time.

So we are going to keep pushing. We are going to keep pushing to close the skills gap. We are going to close the opportunity gap. We are going to make sure that all these jobs that are being made available are being filled with workers who are getting great careers and good lives and going from poverty and welfare to work.

The dignity of being able to get up in the morning and go to work, to take care of your families, to take care of your community, to take care of your churches and schools, what an incredible lift that is for the American people.

Listen, our Better Way agenda is about one thing and one thing only: it is about building stronger families, about building stronger communities, about building a stronger America. It is what we are in the middle of executing and implementing right now. We are really excited to see the great economic news that comes as a result of all these things that we have been working on.

I want you to think about something, Mr. Speaker. Never, never in at least a decade has America been winning the way we are winning today in every way and every day. America is truly winning again, and we are making America great again.

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