Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

One additional way to look at our economy and to see how it compares with what we may have seen around the rest of the globe is to simply look at the statistics as to how our U.S. economy has performed as compared to some others. For example, when we look at real GDP growth from the first quarter of 2001 through the fourth quarter of 2005, the U.S. economy expanded at an average annualized rate over all of those times, even though it was slow during the earlier years, at 2.6 percent, and the United States ranked first among its peer group in the world in real GDP growth. [Page: H1582] In terms of investments of fixed assets, from 2001 to 2005, growth investments in fixed assets as a percentage of GDP growth rose in Canada and the United States but fell in the European Union and Japan. And so once again, the United States was a leader in terms of investment and fixed assets.

In terms of industrial production from 2001 to 2005, through 2005, the United States industrial production increased by 7.1 percent, a very, very healthy picture. And I might add that this industrial production increased because of investments, because of investing in productive things, investment brought about by the budgetary policy and the tax policy of the Congress of the United States and the administration.

Employment and unemployment. From January 2001 through December 2005, the United States ranked second in employment growth in both absolute and in percentage terms. In the United States employment grew by 5,165,000 jobs, or 3.8 percent. Canada ranked first in percentage growth with 9.3 percent, while the European Union ranked 15, first in total increase of 5.7 million, which was actually 3.4 percent, far below the United States.

In December of 2005, the U.S. had an unemployment rate of 4.9 percent, the second lowest among its peer group. If we look at this chart next to me of unemployment rates, if you look at the unemployment rate in the European Union, it was 8.3 percent. If we look at the unemployment rate in Canada, it was 6.4 percent. And at the end of the year, same time frame, the unemployment rate in the United States was 4.8 percent.

Just interestingly enough, there is a member of the U.K. Parliament in town today, and I saw him early this morning and he said, I envy you. I said thank you, and why is that? He said, when I go to work at home and I earn an income for my family, 59 percent gets paid to the government. I envy us, too, because we have seen beyond the period of high taxes. We have seen beyond the period of producing an economic policy that in Europe provides today for an 8.3 percent unemployment rate or in Canada of a 6.4 percent unemployment rate. We are fortunate. But it is because of good policy. It is because of the policy of this administration and this Republican Congress that we have a 4.8 percent unemployment rate.

Labor productivity is up in our country as well, and that is one of the reasons for this great economic growth. From the first quarter of 2001 to the fourth quarter of 2005, labor productivity grew by 9.5 percent. That means that because of technology that we have invested in, smartly, and partly because of tax policy, we have made our workers more productive than at any time in our history and the most productive work force in the world.

I said a word a few minutes ago about price stability. Price stability is what it is today, lack of inflation, inflation of 2 percent or under, because of Fed policy. Chairman Bernanke told me earlier this week that he intends to continue policies that have price stability as the number one goal as inflation targeting continues, to keep our rate of inflation low and to keep interest rates low accordingly. Smart economic policy.

And so as we walk through the things that have occurred, partly because of the Congress and partly because of the Federal Reserve, we see that things in our country are doing well, particularly when compared to others.

On balance, the U.S. economy has outperformed its peer group and large developed economies in a number of key measures of economic well-being between 2001 and 2005, during the period that George W. Bush has been President.

Pro-growth tax policy and good monetary policy have contributed to the superior performance of the U.S. economy, and as my friend from the U.K. Parliament said today, yes, we are proud of this record.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.