[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 13 (Thursday, January 22, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H476-H477]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    WHERE IS TARP MONEY BEING SPENT?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, the House of Representatives just 
a few minutes ago voted to disapprove the $350 billion in additional 
funds for the TARP bailout. But because of the way the original bill 
was passed, that won't do a thing to stop it.
  That money is going to be given to the administration and it's going 
to be spent. We don't know where the $700 billion is going. We know 
where part of it is going, but we certainly don't know where most of 
it's going.
  That means the American taxpayers have given $700 billion to the 
Congress of the United States and we have ceded the authority to spend 
that money to the administration without any real oversight. We don't 
know where that money is being spent and, as a result, we have 
abnegated our responsibility to oversee the power of the purse and make 
sure we are spending the money of the taxpayers wisely.
  In addition to that, not knowing where we are going to spend it, 
where they are spending the $700 billion, next week we are going to 
have another $825 billion bill that is going to come to this Congress, 
and we are not going to know what that bill is until the markup is 
finished tomorrow, which means that we will probably get the 
information on it Saturday, and Monday will be the first day that 
Congress will really take a hard look at it.
  So we will have the afternoon of Monday, and Tuesday, and then vote 
on Wednesday on an $825 billion supplemental stimulus package. That 
means in the last 3 or 4 weeks we will have spent almost $1\1/2\ 
trillion of taxpayers' money and we don't know where it's going. We are 
ceding that authority to the executive branch. And it's an abnegation 
of our responsibility, for the most part. We know where some of it's 
going, but not all of it, not most of it. And it really, really bothers 
me.
  When we come down here and speak, Mr. Speaker, we know from time to 
time there's an awful lot of young people that watch us in the gallery. 
And there's a lot of young people and parents watching from at home. 
And the thing that bothers me is we are spending this money like it's 
going out of style, without any accountability, and we are spending it 
in such large numbers that it has to have a long-term, terribly 
inflationary impact on the economy of the United States of America.
  People in this country don't really know what hyperinflation is. But 
after World War II, Germany, people would get money and they would have 
to take a wheel barrel full of money to the store to buy bread or meat 
or something to live on, and if they didn't do it that day, the money 
would devalue that day and it would be worth less the next day.
  I don't think that's going to happen here in the United States. But 
what will happen, in my opinion, is we will have very strong inflation 
like we had back in the seventies under Jimmy Carter when he was 
President. We had inflation that ran 14 percent. We had unemployment 
that was 10, 11, 12 percent. Because of that, the economy was really 
floundering. And so they brought in Mr. Volcker, who is once again in 
the administration.
  Mr. WOLF. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I am happy to yield to my colleague.
  Mr. WOLF. I want to acknowledge what the gentleman is saying is 
accurate. I have here a $100 billion bill, a Zimbabwe bill, which was 
printed by the Federal Reserve in Zimbabwe in June or July of 2008.
  So what the gentleman is saying, this $100 billion will not even buy 
a loaf of bread.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. A $100 billion piece of currency won't buy a 
loaf of bread. That's what happens when you have hyperinflation. It 
destroys the economy of a country. And we are spending this money so 
rapidly and without any accountability that it really scares me. These 
young people who watch us and who hear us talk, they are the ones who 
are going to have to deal with this in the long-run because if the 
currency devalues, that means the cost of everything is going to go up 
and they are going to have to pay for it.
  What happened back in the seventies was it got so bad that they 
brought Mr. Volcker in, who's in this administration now, and he raised 
interest rates to 21\1/2\ percent. Well, boy, that put the hammer on 
the economy. It slowed down inflation all right, but it increased the 
problems with unemployment, and it hurt the economy so desperately that 
Mr. Carter was saying, My gosh, we had to do with less. We had to 
handle our lives in a much more simple fashion because we couldn't 
afford to live well again.
  And then Ronald Reagan came in and said the way to stimulate the 
economy is to cut taxes to give the American people more of their money 
back and let them spend it, to cut the taxes on business so there was 
more money for investment.
  And, because of that, we came out of that recession and we had about 
8 or 9 years of very positive economic growth. In fact, it was one of 
the longest periods of economic growth in the history of this country. 
But now we are spending money more rapidly than we did in the past. 
It's unbelievable the way they are going to have to print money to deal 
with this problem.
  And so I am very concerned, and I am going to be down here talking 
about this a lot, that we have to do something to stop the spending, to 
control the spending, to be more accountable, because if we don't, 
there will be hyperinflation, there will be a rubber band effect on the 
economy, because once it gets so high, they are going to have to raise 
interest rates so high that you can't buy anything on time. And then 
the economy will go into a nose dive.
  It just will not work. It's going to be very horrible for this 
economy long term if we continue down the path we are on. There needs 
to be accountability. And what we have done in the

[[Page H477]]

last couple of months and we are going to do this next week is not 
going to solve the problem. It's only going to make it worse.

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