[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 28 (Wednesday, February 11, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H1206-H1207]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 THE TRUE COST OF THE STIMULUS PACKAGE

  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. Mr. Speaker, we hear a lot about the economy, as we 
should, but I would like to focus on the cost of all of this money that 
the government says it needs to spend. The front page of today's USA 
Today is headlined, ``Trillions Aimed At Financial Recovery,'' and here 
we see a photograph of the Treasury Secretary, Mr. Geithner, scratching 
his head as he is talking to Members of Congress when he testified 
yesterday.
  Now we hear about the billions spent for this program and the 
trillions spent for this program all in the name of helping the 
economy. I would like to focus on the cost of all of this. If you add 
up all of the bailout packages from last year, the so-called stimulus 
packages, and the bills yet to be passed but promised to be passed this 
year, plus the debt that it will cost Americans yet to be born, it is 
$9,700,000,000,000.

[[Page H1207]]

  Now that is the biggest number I have ever seen in my life. And $9 
billion, it is hard to relate to what 9 billion or $9,700,000,000,000 
is. Well, let's try to focus on how much that really is in terms maybe 
we can understand. If you add up all of the major wars that the United 
States has been involved in since we were a country, and you put 2009 
dollars to those figures, this amount of money still would not cover 
the cost of the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the War Between 
the States, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the 
Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Iraqi wars and the Afghanistan wars. 
We would still have enough money left over in 2009 dollars to pay for 
the Louisiana Purchase in 2009 dollars, the Gadsden Purchase in 2009 
dollars, and Alaska in 2009 dollars with money still left over. Now 
that is a lot of money.
  It has been estimated also that this amount of money would pay for 90 
percent of all of the home mortgages in the whole United States. Now 
we're talking about real money. Or looking at it another way, if you 
divided this money up with all the people on the face of the Earth, 
each one of them would get about $1,500. That is a lot of money. And 
yet, this is the amount of money we are going to try to spend all in 
the name of saving the economy and saving the country.
  I question, first of all, whether or not it will work. But more 
importantly, where are we going to get the money? We don't have the 
money. So we are going to have to borrow the money. And probably we 
will borrow the money from our good friends over in China. Oh, they're 
ready to lend us money and let Americans pay interest on it.
  The Congressional Budget Office has done some work, it hasn't been 
publicized much, about the new stimulus bill, the $835 billion bill 
that just passed the Senate that is coming back to the House in a 
conference bill maybe tomorrow, Friday or whatever. And they said even 
if you spend that money, that is not going to help the economy. So now 
we've got two problems. One, we don't have the money. And the stimulus 
bill may not even help the economy.
  This country has done the stimulus bill thing before. This is not the 
first stimulus bill. It was tried right after World War II. In fact, we 
now have a total of eight stimulus bills that one Congress or another 
has passed all in the name of trying to stimulate the economy.

                              {time}  1545

  And history has shown, basically, they just didn't work. They weren't 
as effective as they were expected to be. So, although we have 
philosophical differences between this side and the other side about 
how to help the economy, I would submit maybe we need to step back and 
rather than say government's the answer in spending money that we don't 
have, taking money from taxpayers who are paying their taxes and 
working, taking it and giving it to the government and letting the 
government dole it out to different special interest groups throughout 
the country in the effort to stimulate the economy, rather than follow 
that philosophy, why don't we let Americans just keep more of their own 
money? Do something really remarkable, tell the American public, 
everybody that pays taxes is going to get a tax deduction. Everybody, 
including corporations and small businesses.
  Then, when Americans have more of their own money, they will be able 
to stimulate the economy by spending it the way they decide, rather 
than the way we decide how to spend that money. And that will give 
small businesses, when they have more capital, the ability to hire 
people to come work for them. You see, businesses, especially small 
businesses, are where jobs are created. They're not created by the 
Federal Government; they're created by the private sector. I submit we 
ought to try the tax cut approach.
  And that's just the way it is.

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