The Economy

Floor Speech

Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the state of the Nation's economy. Upon taking office, President Obama encountered one of the worst recessions in this country's history. He faced tremendous challenges under any standard. To be sure, it would have been difficult for any President to make the kinds of reforms that would have had an immediate effect on an economy this bad. But at the end of the day we see that although he was handed something that we can fairly characterize as an economic emergency, he, through his actions and through his policies, turned that emergency into a national tragedy.

In his first 2 years, instead of focusing on creating jobs and creating a set of circumstances in which the private sector could bring jobs to fruition, President Obama and his substantial majorities in both Houses of Congress used their tremendous advantage to push for greater government control over America's health care choices, more burdensome and debilitating regulations on businesses, and a failed stimulus package that led to record-setting annual deficits.

Just look at America before President Obama took office and compare it to our economic situation now. For example, unemployment is up 9 percent from when President Obama took office. The price of gasoline is up 83 percent compared to when he took office. Long-term unemployment is up 107 percent. The median value of a single-family home in America is down 14 percent, and the U.S. national debt is up 43 percent. He has added over $4 trillion to our national debt.

Then, last year, President Obama created a standoff with Republicans by refusing to accept a reasonable compromise on spending reforms as a condition for raising the Nation's debt ceiling. He presided over the downgrading of America's credit rating, the first in our country's history, and he has taken every opportunity to block the development of America's energy resources, a source of much-needed revenue and jobs.

Perhaps most troubling, this President has intentionally divided the country by waging vicious class warfare campaigns separating average, hard-working Americans by income and then pitting them against one another.

The President's record on this score has been repugnant and damaging.

Instead of working with Congress to address our genuine economic challenges, the President has responded by starting his reelection campaign early. In a series of taxpayer-funded campaign stops, the President sharpened his divisive message and astoundingly blamed Republicans for legislative gridlock--never mind that the President's most recent budget proposal failed to attract even a single vote in the U.S. Senate, and it was, in fact, Senate Democrats who refused to bring the President's own jobs plan to the floor for a vote. Even today, members of the President's own party are lining up against him to oppose his tone-deaf decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline. This project would create 20,000 American jobs, it would inject much needed private sector capital into our economy, and it would increase the country's energy security, but the President has chosen to block the project as an election-year nod to his friends in the extreme leftwing of the environmentalist movement.

President Obama has put the state of our Union in disarray. Certainly he inherited a poor economy, but the decisions he has made and implemented since taking office are making it worse. He was handed an economic emergency, and instead of taking the challenge head-on, he chose to ignore it, and then he turned it into a national tragedy.

There is a void of leadership in the White House. He must end the divisiveness and start dealing directly and decisively with the needs of the country. The President has very little time left to show the American people that he can be the kind of leader who will put the country before his own personal political interests. For the sake of all Americans, I sincerely hope he uses that time wisely.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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