Congressman Jack Kingston - First District of Georgia

Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that 115,000 jobs were added in the month of April. While the announcement of these new jobs is welcomed, many aspects of today’s report demonstrate that Americans continue to suffer through a painfully tepid recovery made even slower by the president’s policies. For instance, unemployment remains above 8 percent, now for the 39^th month in a row, further extending the worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression. The labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of able Americans working or looking for work, was at a 30-year low in April. If the percentage of Americans in the work force were as high today as at the beginning of this recession, unemployment would actually be 11.5 percent.

·         39: The unemployment rate has been at or above 8 percent for 39 consecutive months. Before President Obama took office, unemployment had not been above 8 percent for this long since the Great Depression. Over three years ago, the Obama Administration said that unemployment would never reach 8 percent if the “stimulus” was approved.

·         8.1%: The unemployment rate for the month of April was 8.1 percent. Since the president’s failed $1.2 trillion “stimulus” was enacted in February 2009 unemployment has averaged 9.1 percent.

·         169,000: The total number of employed Americans actually fell by 169,000 in the month of April. The reason the unemployment rate still went down and new jobs were technically added is because the total number of Americans searching for a job fell by 342,000. 

·         Less than 6%: The level at which the Obama Administration claimed unemployment would be today if the “stimulus” was signed into law was below 6 percent.

·         63.6%: The labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of able Americans working or looking for work, was at a 30-year low of 63.6 percent in April. Much of the recent decline in the unemployment rate can be attributed to the historic drop in labor force participation as more and more American give up on finding a job. That means that 36.4 percent of able-bodied, non-elderly Americans are not even looking for a job in the Obama economy.

·         11.5%: If the labor force participation rate were at the same level it was before the recession started the unemployment rate would be 11.5 percent today. 

·         14.5%: The rate of “underemployment” or “real unemployment,” including the unemployed, those who want work but have stopped searching in this economy, and those who are forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment is 14.5 percent.

·         12,500,000: There were 12.5 million unemployed Americans looking for work in the month of April.  There have been more than 12 million unemployed Americans every month that President Obama has been in office.

·         7,853,000: The number of Americans forced to work only part-time in April because they could not find full-time employment was 7.9 million.

·         2,363,000: The number of people who are available to work and have looked for a job at some point in the last year but are not counted as unemployed because they gave up their search is now 2.3 million. 

·         968,000: The number of discouraged people who stopped looking for work because they believed there were no jobs available is now 865,000.

·         22,716,000: The total number of “underemployed” Americans is 22.7 million, including those unemployed (12.5 million), those who are no longer looking for work (2.3 million), and those who are working part-time because no other work is available (7.9 million).

·         39.1: The average number of weeks it takes for job seekers to find a job. The average time it takes for people to find a job is up from 19.8 weeks in January 2009 when President Obama took office.

·         5,101,000: The number of Americans unemployed and searching for work for more than 27 weeks in the month of April. Since President Obama took office in January 2009, the number of people unemployed for more than 27 weeks has increased almost 90 percent.

·         572,000: The economy has shed 572,000 net jobs from February 2009—when the Democrats’ “stimulus” was signed into law—through April 2012.

·         15.1%: The official poverty rate in 2010 according to the Census Bureau—up from 14.3 percent in 2009. This was the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate and the highest poverty rate since 1993.

·         46,200,000: The number of Americans who were in poverty in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009—the fourth consecutive annual increase in the number of people in poverty.  The number of Americans in poverty in 2010 is the largest number in the 52 years in which poverty estimates have been published by the Census Bureau.

·         $3,378: Since President Obama took office, median household incomes have dropped by $3,378, falling to its lowest level since 1996. Household income has fallen by 6.4 percent since 2007.

·         46,326,352: The number of Americans receiving food stamps as of February 2012 was 46.3 million, the third most in any month in history. Today, 15 percent of Americans receive food stamps, an increase of 40 percent since President Obama took office.

·         13^th: Where the U.S. ranks in ease of starting a business in the world according to a World Bank report.  In 2007, the U.S. ranked 3^rd.

·         1,384,000: The number of first time job seekers that are unemployed is now 1.4 million, up 131,000 from January. The number of new workers who cannot find a job has been above 1 million for 35 months.

·         24.9%: The unemployment rate among job seekers between the ages of 16 and 19 was 25 percent in April, up from 23.8 percent in February. Youth unemployment has been above 23 percent for 34 months, the longest streak since the Great Depression.

·         13%: The unemployment rate among African Americans in April was 13 percent.

·         10.3%: The unemployment rate among Hispanics and Latinos was 10.3 percent.

·         12.5%:  The unemployment rate among Americans without high school diplomas.

·         $1,178,000,000,000:  The total cost of the Democrats’ “stimulus.” CBO estimates the cost of the bill will reach $831 billion and interest on the debt for the bill will be at least $347 billion.

In case you missed it, Jack spoke on the House floor this morning about bipartisan ways to encourage economic growth and put more Americans back to work.

Jack's four point plan to encourage economic growth:

1. Enact a Federal budget that provides certainty and shows America is serious about getting its debt under control.
2. Repeal overly-burdensome regulations and government's road block to job creations.
3. Harness America's energy potential to create jobs and bring down the cost of gas.
4. Simplify the tax code to make it fairer, flatter, and more conducive to growth.

“Does the health-care act worsen the deficit? The answer, I think, is clearly that it does,” says Charles Blahous, Medicare trustee and economist at George Mason University. The Associated Press says Blahous’s report shows the health care law “will add at least $340 billion to the deficit, not reduce it”:

“Blahous, in his 52-page analysis released by George Mason University's Mercatus Center, said, ‘Taken as a whole, the enactment of the (health care law) has substantially worsened a dire federal fiscal outlook.

“‘The (law) both increases a federal commitment to health care spending that was already unsustainable under prior law and would exacerbate projected federal deficits relative to prior law,’ Blahous said.”

So not only is ObamaCare making it harder for small businesses to hire new workers, jeopardizing families’ coverage, and threatening seniors’ access to health care. It’s also, as suspected, adding to a debt that is already unsustainable and threatening long-term economic growth.

Click here to see a list of actions taken by the House to repeal and defund the health care law. And visit jobs.GOP.gov for more information on the GOP Plan for America’s Job Creators – which, unlike the president’s tax hikes or health care law, is focused on creating jobs and addressing high gas prices.

As one of their first acts of the 112^th Congress, House Republicans voted unanimously (along with three House Democrats) to repeal the Democrats’ health care law in its entirety.  Although the Democrat-led Senate still refuses to take up legislation to fully repeal ObamaCare, House Republicans have not stopped looking for ways to defund it, resulting in more than $52 billion being taken out of ObamaCare:

In addition to the provisions above, President Obama also signed into law the repeal of the onerous 1099 IRS reporting provision in his health care law.  This will save American businesses countless hours and dollars in compliance costs, freeing up money to hire new workers or retain existing ones during tough economic times.  The President also signed the Budget Control Act (P.L. 112-25) into law which will force the White House Office of Management and Budget to adopt billions of dollars in across-the-board cuts to ObamaCare.

The House has also voted to cut or repeal a number of ObamaCare provisions that the Senate refuses to consider, including:

• Reducing wasteful and fraudulent overpayments of taxpayer-funded subsidies even further (H.R. 3630);
• Additional cuts to the Harkin Fund (H.R. 1217 and H.R. 3630);
• Repealing the Democrats’ rationing board (H.R. 5);
• Eliminating a new entitlement program that Obama Administration officials agree is unsustainable (H.R. 1173);
• Ensuring that the long standing Hyde amendment is applied consistently, prohibiting the use of taxpayer money in the expanded Medicaid program and the new health insurance exchanges (H.R. 3 and H.R. 358);
• Allowing physician-owned hospitals to grow and expand to meet the needs of patients in their area (H.R. 3630);
• Repealing funding for health insurance exchanges (H.R. 1213);
• Repealing funding for SBHC construction (H.R. 1214); and
• Converting funding for graduate medical education in qualified teaching health centers to an authorization of appropriations (H.R. 1216).

While Republicans have made progress, there is still much more to be done.  With recent analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office confirming that the cost of the law has nearly doubled to $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years, the case for repeal could not be stronger.  Republicans will continue to press for full repeal of ObamaCare.

While the president is in Cushing, OK for Day Two of his energy “tour de farce,” the energy we need is stuck up in Canada and the upper Midwest. By blocking the Keystone XL pipeline that connects the two – even as he preaches “all of the above” – President Obama is leaving families and small businesses with fewer jobs and higher gas prices. This is an example of the Obama Energy Gap.

As illustrated in the chart below, the Obama Energy Gap is the gap between the words and the actions of the Obama administration:

After rejecting and personally lobbying against Keystone XL and thousands of new jobs, the president plans to tout that he’s now interjecting himself on behalf of a routine permit that is normally handled by bureaucrats … not Presidents of the United States. Or as Speaker Boehner spokesman Brendan Buck put it, “This is like the governor holding a press conference to renew my driver’s license.”

The president is holding this event because two-thirds of the American people support Keystone XL – and similar numbers think his anti-energy policies will make gasoline more expensive.

The thing is, the southern portion of Keystone from Cushing to the Gulf Coast is being built in spite of his administration – it doesn’t need presidential involvement. The rest of the pipeline does. But instead of doing “all of the above” to address gas prices and create jobs, the president chose to block Keystone.

Republicans have a real “all of the above” strategy that removes government barriers to energy production and stops policies that drive up gas prices. Learn more by “Liking” the American Energy Initiative on Facebook, and visit jobs.GOP.gov for more information on the Republican jobs plan.

Courtesy Office of the Speaker

Today, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) and Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an updated analysis of the President’s health care law.  Below are five facts every American should know about this report:

1. Spending jumps to $1.8 trillion – With America already borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar it spends, this massive increase in federal spending is simply unsustainable.
2. Four million Americans will lose employer-provided health insurance – In just one year, 2016, CBO now predicts four million more Americans will lose the health insurance they have through the workplace than CBO predicted just last year.  This will force these hardworking Americans to purchase government-mandated health insurance in government-run exchanges or pay a penalty.
3. Small businesses left to fend for themselves – The analysis shows that the byzantine small business tax credits are overwhelmingly being rejected by small businesses.  The new analysis shows $20 billion less will go to these credits, leaving employers to struggle with the high cost of health insurance.  
4. More employers choose to pay a fine over providing health insurance – Many economists, and even some companies admitted, that it would be cheaper (and thus more profitable) for employers to pay the employer mandate penalty than to provide their workers with health insurance coverage.  The new JCT/CBO analysis confirms more and more employers are dumping insurance coverage, largely because of the costly benefit package being mandated by the Obama Administration.  In fact, JCT/CBO now predicts businesses will opt to pay an additional $15 billion in penalties instead of providing health insurance coverage to their employees.
5. President Obama’s failed economic policies leading to a weaker economy, lower wages & fewer jobs – The JCT/CBO analysis explains that one of the major reasons for adjusting their predictions is due to “changes in the economic outlook.”  According to the analysis, “In that forecast, the unemployment rate is higher throughout the projection periods than it was in last year’s forecast.  CBO also now estimates that wages and salaries will be lower than previously anticipated.”  As a result, more Americans will be forced to enroll in government-run, and taxpayer-financed, health care programs (Medicaid and CHIP).

Courtesy House Committee on Ways & Means

While the President publicly supports an ‘all of the above’ energy policy, he’s been personally lobbying against it with Senate Democrats.  As POLITICO reports:

The President’s “personally lobbying,” contradicts his support for the ‘all of the above’ energy policy he called for in the State of the Union address and his pledge this week that his Administration would “do whatever we can to speed up construction” of the pipeline.

As if the contradiction wasn’t enough, President Obama’s efforts could be pushing North American energy toward China.  This week, Alberta’s premier indicated that the province plans “plans to pursue exports to Asia rather than rely on the uncertainty in the U.S. market.”

With gas prices on the rise as working families can afford it least, it’s time to put aside election year concerns and approve the Keystone Pipeline.  It will bring safe and dependable energy supplies from North America and offset our reliance on energy resources from countries like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

It’s also time to increase our domestic energy production while advancing research into alternative fuels that will power our future.  It’s ludicrous to think that other countries can produce energy safer, more efficient or more environmentally sound than the United States.