Congressman Tom Price (R-GA) issued the following statement on the one year anniversary of the $862 billion economic stimulus package.

“The scale and scope of the stimulus’ failure has been breathtaking,” said Congressman Price. “One year ago we were assured that unemployment would be tamed, investment would be kickstarted, and good jobs would be created. Instead, nearly four million Americans have lost work and American confidence in government’s ability to solve problems has been shattered. From the long list of pork projects it funded to the slow crawl of its bureaucratic process to the administration’s abandonment of its metric to even track jobs, this experiment in big government economics has been a demonstrable train wreck.

“Not only has the stimulus not brought us job growth as advertised, but it has put America in a perilous budget situation. Every single dollar of the stimulus was borrowed, and the administration has absolutely no plan to pay it back or the interest payments it has spawned. Rather than the inability to create jobs, the lasting legacy of this epic failure, in fact, will be the decades it will take our children and grandchildren to cover the trillion dollar cost. Never has there been a more selfish act of public policy.

“The most frustrating part of this dark anniversary is that it didn’t have to be this way. Conservatives put forth proven pro-growth economic solutions, yet the President opted to go down a hyper-partisan road. Americans are tired of Washington abandoning principle in the moment of economic anxiety. We will not see a return to prosperity until the President recognizes that there are certain truths which have guided us to storied success. Free markets work, our government can never match the ingenuity of our people, and the best way to create growth is to reward hard work.”