Returning America's Competitive Edge

Floor Speech

Mr. RICE of South Carolina. Mr. Speaker, we are all concerned about the 800,000 Federal employees who have been furloughed for 3 days in the government shutdown. We can argue back and forth about who caused the shutdown, but the fact is that 800,000 people have been furloughed, and it could stretch into a week or two.

While we need to work hard to get these people back to work as soon as possible, we must remember that according to the Congressional Budget Office, ObamaCare is costing us 800,000 jobs permanently. We are not talking about working people being furloughed for a few days. We are talking about the permanent loss of 800,000 American jobs because of this job-killing health care law. Where is the outrage over that?

You see, the fact is the President and my friends across the aisle like to say that they are for the working man. They are for American jobs. But if you pay attention just a little bit, their actions belie their rhetoric. The truth is they are not the party of the working man; they are not the party of jobs. My friends across the aisle are the party of Big Government and more regulation. They believe the American people cannot be trusted to make their own decisions, like how to invest their money or whether to buy health insurance. They know better than the American citizen. They want to make your decisions for you, to take care of you. ObamaCare is just the latest job-killing iteration of their Big Government expansion.

You see, it is only common sense. You don't have to be a genius to understand it. Big Government and Big Regulation do not grow the economy; they stifle the economy. They don't create jobs; they kill jobs. We have 7.3 percent unemployment right now, anemic growth four years after the recession ended; 15 percent unemployment among those under 25; 50 percent of recent college graduates are either unemployed or underemployed. I have got three sons who are recent college graduates. They have lived it. We are failing our young people.

Remember, Mr. Speaker, that the Democrats held the Presidency, the Senate, and the House for 2 years and out of that came ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank, two of the biggest government-expanding job-killing laws to be enacted in decades. It is no accident that the economy remains weak. It is no accident that unemployment rates are so high. And now when the Republican House asks simply for a conference, they won't even sit down to discuss it. They refuse to accept anything but the status quo. What is the status quo? Record deficits, high unemployment, and anemic economic growth. I guess with a record like that I wouldn't want to sit down and discuss it either.

Mr. Speaker, I don't think anybody here wanted the government to shut down, but perhaps it is good that we have come to this point. Maybe the government shutdown will be a catalyst that brings us together to make some hard decisions. We have got to stop thinking on six-month time horizons and create long-term certainty if we want our economy to thrive.

Tax reform, deficit reduction, entitlement reform--these are issues that everyone knows must be faced to push our economy forward and to return America's competitive edge. If we could resolve just a couple of these issues, we would lift a cloud of uncertainty, our economy would grow again, and all Americans would benefit.

Nobody wanted this shutdown, but let's take lemons and make lemonade. Let's use this crisis to come together for once and resolve some of these fundamental issues. These are the issues we were sent here to face. I plead with the Senate and the President to rethink your hard-line no-negotiation stance. America is counting on us.

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