To view the video of the opening statement, click here.
To view the video of Burgess questioning Chairwoman Romer, click here.

"Here we go again. Another month, another set of facts and figures that are telling the American people what they already know – the so-called Stimulus isn’t working. Where are the jobs??? Companies aren’t hiring at rates anywhere near where this Administration claimed they would be at this time. Businesses and individuals have the same outlook when it comes to this President – what’s he going to do next to make it harder for us to move forward?

"We’ve seen an ill-advised and scientifically suspect drilling moratorium that is already seeing jobs shipped overseas, as rigs pull up anchor and sail to foreign seas. We’ve seen looming EPA regulations on emissions that will have consumers seeing their energy bills skyrocket. And we’ve got financial regulatory reforms that will take years to implement, causing uncertainty in an already fragile market and leading banks to be less likely to loan money, not knowing what future actions this Administration will take to harm their capital outlooks.

"I asked Secretary Salazar whether the Administration had done any economic analysis of what this drilling moratorium would do to the job outlook in the Gulf region. To date, we have gotten no response. I can only assume that this hasn’t been done, or the Administration would know, as the New Orleans Times Picayune reported, that each job in energy exploration supports an additional 4 jobs providing supplies and services. Kill 5 jobs for the price of 1 – there’s a statistic you don’t hear coming out of the White House.

"Sound economies need stability, and this President has provided anything but. He can claim to be 'pro-business' all he wants, but with continued talk of Card Check and other pro-unionizing regulations, businesses know they can’t afford to take any risks right now. Congressional Democrats even inserted a provision in the War Supplemental bill essentially forcing state and local fire and police departments to unionize – regardless of whether workers in those departments have expressed any interest. Actions speak louder than words, and the actions of this Administration indicate one thing – this President and the people he has put in place throughout the government have yet to see a rule or regulation that they aren’t in favor of passing, and each rule and each regulation adds cost to the price of doing business.

"The Business Roundtable recently sent the White House a report of exactly what this President’s policies are doing to businesses around the country. In a letter to Peter Orszag, Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon, and James Owens, CEO of Caterpillar Inc., said businesses leaders are
'increasingly concerned that political expediencies of the short-term harm our ability to partner with government to create policies that foster growth.' Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan told the White House 'Punishing whole industries, whether you were reckless or not, just isn’t the way to do things.' And Dan DiMicco, CEO of Nucor Corp., told the Wall Street Journal, 'There’s this common concern…that we’re not doing the right things yet, and it’s showing up in the jobs numbers.'

"One reason this Administration is likely so disconnected with the reality of the private sector is that so few of the President’s top advisors have any real-world experience. Professors and Academics, people who’ve spent the bulk of their careers in government – that is who we have dictating to the private sector how CEOs should be running their businesses, and that is a large part of why businesses overwhelmingly resent the mandates being thrown at them by this Administration. Maybe if the President started hiring more CEOs in his cabinet, like past Presidents from both parties have done for decades, he would start getting the kind of advice needed to allow the private sector to grow.

"It is dismaying that the Council of Economic Advisors’ latest Economic Impact report admits that any analysis of job creation in each state in this report is “speculative and uncertain.” After spending hundreds of billions of dollars to “stimulate” the economy, a year and a half later we can still only “speculate” on job growth? There either have or have not been jobs created by the stimulus. I don’t need to speculate, all I have to do is look at the unemployment numbers that have been so stagnant under this President. The Stimulus was a failure. I don’t have to speculate about that.

"President Obama’s philosophy in steering this economy seems to be taken directly from Alice in Wonderland: 'When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.' And 'If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.'

"With that, I yield back."