The Official Truth Squad
THE OFFICIAL TRUTH SQUAD -- (House of Representatives - March 02, 2006)
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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Price for yielding. I appreciate it very much, and as our colleagues have expressed to you before, we thank you for organizing these meetings and helping to get the Truth Squad out here.
Many of us have been concerned for the past several months that there is a lot of disinformation out there and that the time has come for us to set the record straight, and I think that it is very important that we do so. Just saying things will not make them so, but if they are not responded to, then people will believe that they are so.
I thought that our colleague, the gentlewoman from the State of Virginia (Mrs. Drake), was doing a great job of talking about several of the issues that I think are important, and talking about Ireland as a great success story is important to do.
Our economy is doing great, and talking it down does not help our situation and our country. I think we do need to be positive and talk about how things are going great.
I speak to a lot of school groups, and they will often ask me what is the difference between Democrats and Republicans, and I generally give them several things to think about. But as my colleague pointed out, the biggest difference between Democrats and Republicans is we believe that the public knows how to spend its money better than the government knows how to spend their money. That is sort of a short definition. If we left it up to the Democrats, they would basically be taking all the money from everybody and giving it to government bureaucrats to spend.
I think the whole issue of family friendly taxes is very important too. We are not a party of extremely wealthy people, as we are portrayed to be. In fact, there is a lot more wealth on the other side than there is on our side, but they do a pretty good job of trying to hide that.
I want to talk about some specific numbers also, in addition to talking about in general terms some things that may have already been said by some of my colleagues. I have been out meeting with constituents, so I am not sure of all the things that were said, and I hope I do not repeat too many of the same things.
I think it is important to talk about the fact that our unemployment rate right now is 4.7 percent, the lowest monthly rate since 2001, and lower than the averages of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Just today I was talking to a man with a very large business down in North Carolina in the fifth district, and he was saying they could grow their business by 300 or 400 people if they could get the skilled workers that they need to grow that business. That is a very significant point for us. Our economy could be doing even better, but we do lack skilled folks. I talked with him and I will be working with the community college system down there to try to help him get the programs established that he needs so that they can get people with the backgrounds that they need.
I am not sure if Congresswoman Drake mentioned this, but real household net worth right now is $51.1 trillion, an all-time high in this country. Our GDP, of course, is growing at a much higher rate than anybody thought it was going to grow. The fourth quarter grew at 1.6 percent, and the estimate had been 1.1 percent. This encouraging economic news is proof that lower taxes plus restrained Federal spending equals economic growth.
That is a math equation that the Democrats just cannot seem to grasp. Maybe it is because they keep trying to substitute new variables and it just does not work. Taxing plus spending will never equal economic growth and prosperity. But the Republican formula of lower taxes and restrained Federal spending will always come out in favor of the American taxpayer and his checkbook, and that is what we need to be concentrating on.
I am going to throw out a few more facts to go along with what we are trying to do through the Truth Squad. We have got high consumer confidence these days, too. It rose to 106.3 in January, the highest level in over 3 years. So we are doing our best to make sure people know the economy is doing well and to raise consumer confidence.
We know that incomes rose in December, and we are up 1.4 percent in 2005. Again, very, very good news. Retail sales rose in December. We are up 6.4 percent in 2005 over 2004. Our manufacturing continues to expand. Manufacturing activity grew for the 32nd consecutive month in January. There is tremendous expansion out there, so we want that to continue to grow.
Construction spending is at an all-time high. Construction spending rose 1 percent in the month of December alone. For 2005, spending reached a record $1.120 trillion, an increase of 8.9 percent over the previous record set in 2004. Housing starts continue to go up.
So our economy is doing very well, and, again, it is based on the fact that Republicans believe in lower taxes and leaving more money in the pockets of American families. That is the way we can grow the economy. I hate hearing the words ``government investment.'' The government never invests. It spends.
We have to get people to understand the language. As my colleagues know, language is a very important thing to us. How we use words is important because it gets people's minds set about what those words mean. We need to stop government spending, and we need to leave as much money as possible in the hands of the American taxpayers. We need to keep this economy growing vitally, and the way to do that is to keep Republicans in charge.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I will yield back to the gentleman from Georgia.
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