[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 27 (Tuesday, February 10, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H1134-H1135]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          THE SPENDULOUS BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
  I want to talk about the spendulous bill that is coming before the 
House once again.
  If you add up all of the money it's going to cost us in this 
spendulous bill, it's going to total $9.7 trillion. Now, I had to put 
it on two poster boards here, Mr. Speaker, so we could see how long a 
number that is. That includes, of course, the big bailout bills that 
were passed, and, of course, the debt on the spendulous bill and future 
debt that we're going to require because of agreements to provide aid 
in this new bill.
  Now, just to give you--I mean, nobody understands what $9.7 trillion 
means. So let me try to explain it in terms maybe we can understand.

                              {time}  2000

  If you take all the home mortgages in the United States, every one of 
them, this will pay off 90 percent of them by this bill that we're 
getting ready to pass. It's also enough to give every person on the 
face of the earth $1,500, every one of them, no matter where they are. 
That's how much $9.7 trillion is. That means everybody could get some 
money from the United States on this bill.
  Putting it another way, if you add up the cost of the wars in 
Afghanistan and the war in Iraq, this is 13 times that amount. And it's 
been figured that if you add up in current 2009 dollars the cost of all 
the wars that the United States has fought in, the Revolutionary War, 
the War Between the States, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, 
the Iraqi wars and the Afghanistan wars, it still is less than $9.7 
trillion. If you add up the wars and if you then figure out how much it 
cost us in 2009 dollars for the Louisiana Purchase, the Gadsden 
Purchase, and the whole State of Alaska, that's still less than $9.7 
trillion.
  So we're talking about real money here, Mr. Speaker, on this so-
called ``spendulous'' bill that the House will get to vote on again at 
the end of this week.
  This House stimulus bill, as it is properly called, is bigger than 
168 of 180 national economies that are measured by the World Bank. Let 
me say that again. If you take 180 countries and their national 
economy, this bill is bigger than 168 of them.
  So we're talking about money that, first of all, probably will not 
even work to stimulate the economy. We've been told that spending 
equals stimulus. That is just not true. Government spending on 
government programs doesn't mean that the economy is going to be 
better. All it means is the government, our government, is going to get 
bigger.
  Many economists argue that there's no historical precedent for a 
stimulus spending driven economy, and they base that on history. You 
see, we've done this stimulus package before. Since 1948, there have 
been eight stimulus packages that have come to the House of 
Representatives, that have passed, and history has shown none of those 
really stimulated the economy at all. They had no effect on the 
economy, but we don't pay any attention to history. We just think we 
can make it happen by spending a lot of government money.
  And of course, we're not convinced, those of us who don't want to 
spend this kind of money, that it will stimulate the economy, and 
besides all that, we don't have the money, Mr. Speaker. We're just flat 
broke. We've got to borrow the money. We've got to borrow it from 
somebody else in the world like China and pay interest to China, of all 
countries, so that we can take this money from Americans yet to be born 
and give it to different interest groups in the United States, all 
under the pretext of we're going to stimulate the economy. It doesn't 
make much sense to me to be spending this kind of money, which is real 
money, on this so-called fake stimulus package.
  Maybe we should not spend any money at all. Maybe we should think 
about letting Americans, who pay taxes, and do report their taxes to 
the IRS, let them keep more of their money, an across-the-board tax cut 
for everybody that pays taxes. They would have more of their own money 
to begin with. Government wouldn't be taking it from them and deciding 
what to do with it. Let them keep their own money, and they can spend 
it how they

[[Page H1135]]

see fit. And maybe they will stimulate the economy by the way they 
choose to spend it rather than wasteful spending by the Federal 
Government, the government growing bigger, the government getting more 
involved in everything from the banking industry to the how-to-make-a-
Federal car, and all of these other programs where we're getting the 
nationalization of this.
  It's not the answer, Mr. Speaker, and that's just the way it is.

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