{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://www.barrasso.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ID=D5A3A6DC-A33C-405D-ACB5-DBA0F4F35391", "Barrasso: Failed Obama Economy is Nothing to Celebrate", "2016-09-20", "2016", "2016-09", "Republican", "House", "WY", "John Barrasso", "B001261", "www.barrasso.senate.gov", null, null, "legacy", "WASHINGTON, D.C.\u2014 Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) delivered the following remarks on the Senate floor regarding President Obama\u2019s devastating economic legacy.\r\nExcerpts of Senator Barrasso\u2019s remarks:\r\nWeak Economic Growth\r\n\u201cAccording to a recent Gallup poll, people say that the economy is the biggest problem facing this country today. The number two concern of the poll is a tie \u2013 between unemployment and dissatisfaction with government.\r\n\u201cAfter seven and a half years of a very poor recovery from the recession, it is easy to see why Americans are so concerned about their own jobs, their own economy, their own future.\r\n\u201cPresident Obama took office during a recession. The recession ended in June of 2009 \u2013 just a few months after the president was in office. So that was more than seven years ago.\r\n\u201cAmerica has an economy that has been crawling on its hands and knees ever since.\r\n\u201cNormally after a recession, an economy bounces back, does it vigorously, with great strength. Never happened this time.\r\n\u201cUnder President Obama, the country has been struggling with the weakest recovery in the last 60 years. Millions and millions of Americans have been left behind and they feel it.\r\n\u201cGoing back to 1950, the average annual growth for our economy has been three and a quarter percent a year.\r\n\u201cThrough good times and bad, an average of 3 percent or more. President Obama\u2019s average for the past seven years has been less than half of that.\r\n\u201cFor the past three economic quarters, it\u2019s been growing at a 1.1 percent annual rate, 0.9 percent, 0.8 percent.\r\n\u201cIt\u2019s clear that President Obama is well below average when it comes to his economic policies.\r\n\u201cThe non-existent Obama recovery means that too many Americans have gone too long without being able to find a job.\r\n\u201cThere are still close to 16 million Americans who are either unemployed or underemployed \u2013 who are seeking to find full-time work, many of these are part-time workers who are trying to go and find full-time work.\r\nOut-of-control Debt\r\n\u201cLast month, the Congressional Budget Office came out with some new numbers about Washington\u2019s debt.\r\n\u201cNow the American people know that the president has added considerably to the debt of this country.\r\n\u201cHe came into office and he immediately started running deficits of a trillion dollars a year.\r\n\u201cNo one had ever seen deficits like that before \u2013 and of course each deficit gets added to the debt\u2014the debt accumulates with deficit spending each year.\r\n\u201cThat wasn\u2019t enough for this president.\r\n\u201cThen he pushed through the health care law \u2013 and burdened taxpayers with trillions of dollars of additional debt.\r\n\u201cAccording to this new report, Washington\u2019s deficit is going to be 35 percent higher this year than it was last year.\r\n\u201cThese failed economic policies of the past seven and a half years don\u2019t just belong to President Obama.\r\n\u201cThey belong to Democrats in Congress who have been pushing, and continue to push along this line of more government, more spending, more regulations, less individual choice.\r\n\u201cThese are the same ideas that have robbed Americans of opportunities every single time that Democrats have tried them.\r\n\u201cPresident Obama and the Democrats in Congress may think that the pace of this recovery has been good enough. Republicans in the Senate know that this is an economy which is nowhere near as good as it should be or could be.\r\n\u201cWe are focused on policies that promote real job growth \u2013 so Americans can get off the sidelines and back onto a career path.\r\n\u201cRepublicans are focused on policies that free our economy to grow like it should \u2013 not just hobble along with a lackluster pace of the last seven years.\r\n\u201cWe\u2019re focused on policies that will rein in Washington\u2019s out-of-control debt and regulations.\r\n\u201cWe\u2019re focused on policies that allow Americans to get paid what they deserve. Not just one raise every seven or eight years.\r\n\u201cRepublicans are ready to move beyond the president\u2019s legacy of failure, and to help America\u2019s economy really get moving again.\u201d\r\n\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://www.barrasso.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/news-releases?ID=D5A3A6DC-A33C-405D-ACB5-DBA0F4F35391"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7565240375697613, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}