Gephardt Statement on President Bush's Trip to Kansas City

September 4, 2003 - 

Below is an excerpt from a conference call Rep. Dick Gephardt held earlier today

President Bush is in Kansas City today with the Chamber of Commerce to talk about the tax cuts and economic policy.

In my view, his policies have failed. He's taking our country and our economy in the wrong direction. He has the worst jobs record since Herbert Hoover. He's lost more jobs than the last eleven presidents combined. His big Labor Day announcement was the employment of another bureaucratic department official who was supposed to focus on manufacturing. I would say to the president that we don't need another department bureaucrat. What America needs are jobs.

I worked in 1993 with Bill Clinton to pass his economic program. It was very difficult to pass. Republicans said it would cause a depression in America. They weren't just wrong, they were dead wrong. It was a platform on which the American people created the best economy we've had in probably fifty years in this country. Twenty-two million new jobs created in seven years. I'm proud of that achievement. I know that when I'm elected president, I can bring back that kind of economy. That's what I intend to do.

Just to end with some statistics. Missouri's unemployment rate is 5.6%. If you take into account the people who have stopped looking for jobs or taken part-time jobs because they can't find full time jobs, it's probably more like 9%.
Missouri's lost 115,000 jobs since Bush took office, and there are 544,000 uninsured individuals in Missouri right now. So we've got a major employment problem, jobs problem in Missouri, and it's going to take more than speeches from the
president and the appointment of a new bureaucratic position. It's going to take a new and better economic plan to get this economy moving again. That's what I'll do when I'm president.