[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 7 (Tuesday, January 13, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H165-H166]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             A NEW DIRECTION FOR AMERICA'S ECONOMIC FUTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I congratulate the President-elect on 
being in touch with the American people in understanding the pain on 
Wall Street, of job losses, of foreclosures, and of the sense of 
urgency. I share the sense of urgency he brings to this issue and the 
idea that we need a significant new investment--stimulus, whatever you 
want to call it--in America to turn things around. That's the good 
news.
  The bad news is I don't believe he is well served by his economic 
advisers. These are your typical pointy-headed, academic economists who 
think that what we need is to return to a speculative, consumer-driven 
society, not a wealth-oriented, production-driven society with a strong 
foundation. They want instant gratification with five times as much in 
tax cuts as investment in infrastructure in this country, a country 
with a $1.6 trillion infrastructure deficit--a crumbling water system, 
sewer systems, roads, bridges.
  One hundred sixty thousand bridges in this country on the National 
Highway System, let alone the local, are structurally deficient or are 
functionally obsolete. Our transit systems are operating with 
obsolescent or obsolete equipment. Now, the investments in these areas 
aren't all shovel-ready. They're going to drop this shovel-ready 60 
days, going to be done in 18 months. We are in deep trouble in this 
country, and rebuilding the foundation and the underpinnings of this 
economy is going to be critical toward a long-term recovery effort. 
When you invest in these things, you put people to work. These are much 
better than tax cuts.
  Now, you don't have to take it from me. Yes, he has his economic 
advisers--Mr. Summers and others--but I would rather take advice from 
Paul Krugman, who just got the Nobel Prize for Economics.
  He says, ``And bear in mind that even a project that delivers its 
main punch in, say, 2011 can provide significant economic support in 
earlier years. If Mr. Obama drops the `jump-start' metaphor, if he 
accepts the reality that we need a multi-year program rather than a 
short burst of activity, he can create a lot more jobs through 
government investment even in the near term.''
  He goes on to say, ``So my advice to the Obama team is to scrap the 
business tax cuts and, more important, to deal with the threat of doing 
too little by doing more, and the way to do more is to stop talking 
about jump-starts and look more broadly at the possibilities for 
government investment.''
  How about a national high-speed rail network? That would take 
decades. It would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, but it would 
build a future for America. The emergencies would be built here. The 
cars would be built here. The tracks would be built here. It's so much 
more fuel-efficient than our current modes of transportation. How about 
our existing transit system--the 12,000 obsolete buses or the need for 
new streetcar systems? These projects, yes, can't be going in 60 or in 
90 days. Well, a few of them actually can. In fact, we have a list on 
the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee from both local and 
State and national groups that totals a couple hundred billion dollars. 
Yet Mr. Summers poo-poos the idea that there is an adequate amount of 
investment that can be begun and made in the short term, and he'd 
rather send it out in checks of about $8 per pay period to Americans.
  I don't think the people I represent believe that, if they get an 
extra $8 take home that that's building a strong, new foundation, 
giving them confidence in the future of this economy, and I certainly 
don't believe that banks should be able to recapture taxes they paid in 
the past because they've speculated themselves to the verge of 
insolvency, taking money from the taxpayers that they won't tell us how 
they've billed. Now they want to get a look-back on their taxes. That's 
not going to put one single person to work. It might give some CEO yet 
another bonus, but it's not going to put anybody to work.
  Let's have a much more realistic, concrete, if you will, investment 
in America's future rather than more of the same. The huge amount of 
tax cuts in this proposal sound a little bit too much like the George 
Bush trickle-down economy. It's time for a new direction to rebuild the 
foundations of

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this country, and I urge the President-elect to bring in his economic 
advisers for a little chat and, perhaps, to reorient their thinking.

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