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




                             STIMULUS BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Indiana (Mr. Pence) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PENCE. Madam Speaker, we gather on this floor at a time just a 
few moments after the United States Senate has passed by a sufficient 
majority a spending bill, the intention of which is to stimulate this 
economy. But careful examination shows, and more Americans every day 
are realizing, that the only thing the Democrat stimulus bill will 
stimulate is more government and more debt.
  Let me say emphatically: House Republicans know two things to a 
certainty. Number one, we are in a recession; American families are 
hurting; millions have lost their jobs, and millions more worry that 
they will be next. But, number two, Republicans also know this Congress 
must do something.
  Despite the fact that the President of the United States last night 
told the Nation's media and the American people that he disagreed with 
some in Congress who believe we should do nothing, let me say, with 
great respect to our President, I know of no Republican member of the 
House or Senate who believes that in these difficult times we should do 
nothing. I would be prepared to stand corrected if the administration 
would like to provide names, but a casual survey of Republican members 
of the House and the Senate should instruct the American people that 
Republicans believe we should do something, but we also believe we 
should take time to get it right; that we should create a stimulus bill 
that is not, as the bills that have passed the House and Senate now 
are, a stimulus bill that actually is not a long laundry list of worn-
out liberal spending priorities but actually is, at its center, a bill 
that will give working families and small businesses more of their 
hard-earned dollars to spend.
  At the President's invitation, Republicans brought forward a 
Republican alternative which would give the average married couple a 
tax break this year of some $3,400. We would let small businesses write 
off up to 20 percent of their profits this year. This kind of tax 
relief, Madam Speaker, is precisely the kind of tax relief that John F. 
Kennedy advanced to stave off an economic downturn in the 1960s; that 
is what Ronald Reagan did to turn back an even more serious recession 
in the 1980s; and, after the towers fell in New York City and the 
Pentagon was struck on 9/11, it was what this Congress did in a 
bipartisan way to turn around a downturn in our economy.
  Tax relief, when combined with some modest investment in 
infrastructure that I believe Republicans in the main would support, is 
precisely the kind of stimulus that the American people want to see 
happen, and it is not what has passed out of the House or Senate.
  But I rise today with a hopeful note that, after some tough partisan 
rhetoric in recent days, this Congress now with the conference 
committee will come together and will again embrace President Obama's 
call for bipartisan input on this bill. Conference committees, for 
people looking in, are really the time when the House and Senate 
reconcile differences. But sometimes they can be a fresh start in 
legislation; and our hope is that now we will be able to bring forward 
these time-honored, time-tested efforts for growing our economy. And I 
believe the American people are with us.
  Yesterday, in Indiana, I held a town hall meeting a little bit south 
of where the President was. Three hundred Hoosiers gathered at Donner 
Center in Columbus, Indiana yesterday. And I have to tell you, Madam 
Speaker, I sensed, as was reported in the local paper today, a 
tremendous amount of skepticism about the idea that we can borrow and 
spend and bail our way back to a growing economy. There was tremendous 
support in that room for tax relief for small businesses and working 
families.
  But a little girl named Hillary rose and touched my heart. She said 
to me: Congressman Pence, my dad is raising me and her sibling as a 
single parent. Little Hillary told me he just got his hours cut from 40 
hours a week to 24. She said, ``Is there anything in this bill that 
they just passed that will get my dad his hours back?'' And I looked at 
her with no small amount of emotion and I said, ``Hillary, because I 
can't answer yes to that question, because I can't tell you that 
something in the Democrat stimulus bill will help your dad get back to 
full time, I can't support this bill.''
  The American people are on to it. We need to come together in a 
bipartisan way and do what history teaches will get this economy 
growing again.

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