Economic Recovery After the Pandemic

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARTER of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss the most important issue facing our country today: the reopening of the U.S. economy.

For 16 long months, the U.S. economy has been held hostage by government, both elected and unelected. What started as a 15-day shutdown to allow hospitals to brace for the coming wave of COVID cases has ballooned into over a year of shifting goalposts, evolving science, and political power grabs.

Since the pandemic began, over 200,000 small businesses, which the President once claimed were the backbone of the U.S. economy, have been shuttered for good. This has left their owners jobless and futures uncertain.

Those whose businesses did survive the long lockdowns still face harsh restrictions. For too long and in too many cases, we have seen restrictions on controlling how many customers they can serve, how their employees can conduct business, and, by default, how much revenue they can bring in.

Worse, the reopening of our economy has been prolonged even further by the misguided attempts from the political left to provide relief.

The example I hear the most from constituents and businesses back in George's First Congressional District is the increased unemployment benefits. Under these expanded benefits, many Americans have been able to receive more money not working than they did actually working. This is a poor incentive to get people back into jobs, especially as our economy continues to see record-high job openings.

Businesses coming out of their long hibernation will continue to struggle to find employees as long as this benefit is in place.

There are not enough taxpayer dollars in the world to give these businesses the relief they need, but we can remove the Federal Government as an obstacle to returning to normalcy.

We need policies that incentivize Americans to find jobs and allow businesses to stand on their own. Ultimately, we need to put an end to all COVID business restrictions nationwide.

It is hard to say what the long-term impact of prolonged shutdowns will be, but it does not take a Harvard economist to know that losing 200,000 jobs in small businesses alone does not spell good fortune.

The sooner we get Americans back to work and our economy back to full capacity, the sooner we can return to normal or, at the very least, stop the damage from continuing.

To borrow a quote from President Trump, we built the greatest economy in the world, and we will do it a second time.

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