[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 27 (Tuesday, February 10, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H1086-H1087]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       A POLICY THAT DOESN'T WORK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
California (Mr. McClintock) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, Benjamin Franklin warned us that 
``Passion governs, but she never governs wisely.''
  As the Congress and the President rush to enact the latest in a long 
line of mega-spending bills, I think we would be well advised to spend 
a little more time on the dispassionate math of the matter.
  The Congressional Budget Office issued a report last week that warns 
us, as reported by the Washington Times, that the spending bills may 
``help in the short term but result in so much government debt that 
within a few years they would crowd out private investment, actually 
leading to a lower gross domestic product over the next 10 years than 
if the government had done nothing.''
  We are already running a $1.2 trillion national deficit this year 
with a spending bill racing back toward this House to add another $800 
billion on top of that.
  Let's put that in perspective: a $2 trillion deficit, that is 150 
times the size of the annual deficit that has brought the State of 
California to the brink of bankruptcy. That is $6,500 of new debt for 
every man, woman and

[[Page H1087]]

child in the United States, $26,000 for an average family of four. And 
that is not a theoretical number. That family will have to repay that 
$26,000 plus interest from their future taxes just as surely as if it 
appeared at the bottom of their credit card statement this month.
  This is all being done in the name of stimulating the economy, but 
the supporters of this policy have not have been able to cite a single 
example in all of recorded history where massive government spending 
has actually stimulated an economy. There are plenty of examples where 
it ruined economies and brought down great nations.
  The supporters of this policy have not been able to explain how the 
government can inject a single dollar into the economy that it has not 
first taken out of that same economy. They have not been able to 
explain how we strengthen our economic future by leaving the next 
generation with an unprecedented debt that will take them decades to 
pay off.
  What the President told us last night, and my friend from Texas said 
just a few moments ago, is that by spending another $800 billion, they 
can create or save up to 4 million jobs. That sounds good until you 
realize that comes to more than $200,000 a job by their own numbers. By 
their own numbers, we could literally send those 4 million lucky 
families a check for $100,000 and save half of what they plan to spend.

                              {time}  1300

  If this policy worked, we would already be enjoying a period of 
unprecedented economic expansion. The bailouts and spending and loan 
guarantees already issued now total $9.7 trillion. As Bloomberg pointed 
out this week, that is enough to pay off 90 percent of all of the home 
mortgages in America. Not 90 percent of the bad mortgages, 90 percent 
of all of the mortgages.
  We have not seen prosperity from these policies because these 
policies don't work. They didn't work in Japan in the 1990s, as my 
friend from California just mentioned, they didn't work in America in 
the 1930s. The unemployment rate in 1939, after nearly a decade of New 
Deal spending, was the same as it was in 1931.
  Madam Speaker, history tells us that bankrupt nations don't last very 
long. Before we can secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and 
our posterity, the Nation's finances must first be solid. So I beg the 
majority to pause and consider carefully what they are doing. I beg the 
President to pause and consider what kind of legacy he wants to leave 
the Nation. And, I beg the American people, while there is still time, 
to rise up and to demand a return to fiscal sanity.

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