[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 30 (Friday, February 13, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H1596-H1600]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE ECONOMIC STIMULUS BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, it's a pleasure to have the 
hour--I probably won't take a full hour--but to have the opportunity to 
speak to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and, in particular, 
follow my colleague from Texas, the gentleman who just spoke, the words 
of wisdom that he expressed, the gentleman, Mr. Conaway, who is a 
certified public accountant, as he described the problems with this 
bill that was passed on the floor today, Mr. Speaker, and no doubt will 
be passed by the Senate tomorrow and probably signed into law by 
President Obama on Monday.
  The thing that I want to express, and I think that Mr. Conaway and 
some other speakers on our side of the aisle said as they spoke about 
this bill, was not that we on the Republican side are opposed to doing 
something. I mean, we don't want to just do nothing. Although, Mr. 
Speaker, I firmly believe that doing nothing would be better than the 
harm that's likely to be inflicted on our economy and, as Mr. Conaway 
said, on our children and grandchildren by the enactment of this 
legislation where we're spending almost $1.2 trillion when you include 
the interest on the debt, that putting that burden on the backs of our 
future generations without an absolute assurance, without an absolute 
assurance, Mr. Speaker, that those 4 million jobs would be created and 
that this would

[[Page H1597]]

jump-start our economy and get us out of this deep recession.
  Even with that, I would have some concerns, but Vice President Biden 
just said the other day that he thought that this bill had about a 30 
percent chance of failure. Now, you think about that. We're going to 
take money, Federal money, that we really don't have in the Treasury. 
We hope that we can sell these bonds and this Federal paper, Treasury 
notes to people on the open market. Probably some foreign governments 
like China and others might buy some of this. But if they don't, then 
it's just simply a matter of running the printing press to come up with 
this money, and of course, as we all know that weakens our dollar. It 
leads to inflation. And so I'm not surprised when Vice President Joe 
Biden said, well, look, there was no guarantee, we're doing the best we 
can. We hope it works, but it's probably got about a 30 percent chance 
of failure.
  For my money, Mr. Speaker, that is too great a chance of failure. It 
is just not worth that, and that's why I say that, in fact, doing 
nothing probably would be better. And although we would go through some 
tough times economically, as we are now, indeed people are suffering, 
and it may take 2 or 3 years to get out of this recession, but the 
Republican minority has a plan. We're not just standing in the doorway 
blocking any kind of meaningful, good legislation. We want something to 
work. We don't want it to take 3 or 4 years. We want to try to 
stimulate this.
  And that's what our leader said on the floor this afternoon as we 
debated this issue, and finally, Madam Speaker spoke and our leader 
Boehner spoke, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee on the 
majority side, Mr. Obey, spoke. But it's really the words of Mr. 
Boehner I think I would want my colleagues and anybody within shouting 
distance to remember what he said.
  We who voted ``no'' on this bill are fully aware, fully cognizant of 
the fact that people in every single district in this country, all 435 
of them, my 11th of Georgia absolutely--the State of Georgia is facing 
a $3 billion deficit, and like most States, they have to balance their 
budget. So times are tough, and as John Boehner said, and I would 
repeat here now, Mr. Speaker, we want to do something.
  Unfortunately, the plan that the minority Republican party had was 
given no opportunity to be presented. There was no subcommittee 
hearings. There were no full committee hearings. There was no 
opportunity for amendments to be presented on the floor, so-called at 
least a modified open rule, where both Republicans and Democrats would 
have an opportunity to say, you know, we need to change this. There are 
some good in this bill. I think it's a 1,000-page bill. We had it on 
the floor earlier. Remember, it was about that high. It's probably six 
or eight Bibles thick. And within that, yeah, there were some good 
things but a whole lot of things that are not good, and I will try to 
speak to some of that as we proceed.
  But the idea of shutting out the minority and not letting them speak 
on behalf of the constituents that they represent, every one of us, 178 
Republicans represent about 675,000 people in their respective 
districts. And quite honestly, 50 very conservative Democrats, they 
call themselves the Blue Dogs. Many of them are from Southern States, 
good Members, also representing 675,000 people, and fiscally 
conservative. They were shut out. They didn't get an opportunity. 
That's why this vote ended up being--even though the Democratic 
majority prevailed, the bipartisanship on the vote was on the ``no'' 
side. That means that every single Republican in this body, Mr. 
Speaker, all 178 of us voted no, and we were joined by six or eight 
Democrats who all voted ``no,'' and all for the same reason.
  The Republican Members are not all the same on every issue. We have 
conservative Members on social issues, like myself, and we have some 
Members who are socially moderate. But what you saw today is the coming 
together of the Republican minority on one thing that we absolutely 
always agree on and that we will always stand for and what I think 
defines us from the majority party. There's a difference. There's no 
question about it, and that difference is, we on the Republican side, 
Mr. Speaker, believe in limited Federal Government, and we believe in 
reduced spending and let the States do what they can for themselves and 
the people do what they can for themselves. Let them keep more of their 
own hard-earned money. That means individual employees. It also means 
employer--these small, mom-and-pop companies.
  Most of the jobs in this country, as we all know, are created by 
those small, mom-and-pop companies, less than, far less than 50 
employees. We're not talking about the Microsofts and the Home Depots 
and the Coca-Colas and the huge companies. We're talking about these 
small companies that would, if you gave them an opportunity to keep 
more of their own money--and that's basically what the Republican plan 
was, Mr. Speaker, as you know, that we felt like in this bill, that 
there should be some spending, and the amount of spending should be 
significant on infrastructure projects. After all, that's what was 
talked about for a month or 6 weeks ahead of time: we are going to put 
people back to work in this country on repairing bridges, rebuilding 
roads, putting more money into rapid transit across all 50 of the 
States.
  And each State, Mr. Speaker, was asked to submit a list of projects 
called shovel ready--shovel-ready projects so that they could start 
turning dirt within 90 days. I think the bill finally extended to 120 
days. We were in favor of that. We are in favor of that. But in this 
final bill that was passed on the floor of this House today, about 7 
percent of the money, about 7, not 70, Mr. Speaker, but 7 percent of 
the money goes to those infrastructure projects within our States. And 
I do believe that more money spent on those projects would indeed put 
people back to work and get the economy going, and I was very much in 
favor of that.
  But the other thing that we felt very strongly about, though, was the 
opportunity to let people keep more of their own money, and that's why 
the Republican alternative had a 5 percent cut in the tax rate of 
everybody who pays taxes, no matter what your income. If you're paying 
at the 36 percent bracket, you'd pay 31 percent. If you're paying at 
the 28 percent bracket, you'd pay 23 percent. If you're paying at the 
15 percent, 10, and the 10, 5. You get it. Everybody, across-the-board 
5 percent cut in their Federal tax burden, and immediately start seeing 
that money in their paycheck, not going to Uncle Sam.
  And also, you know, that the Republican alternative felt very 
strongly the way to create jobs in this country or to preserve jobs--
President Obama said create 4 million or save 4 million. He's a little 
vague on that. But if you cut the corporate income tax rate from 35 to 
25, and that's in the Republican alternative, the small businessmen and 
-women who usually pay as individuals, they're not S corporations or C 
corporations or LLCs or whatever you call it. But that would give them 
an opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to make more profit, to be able to expand 
their product line, add on to the size of their building, bring in more 
people, hire more people and get more people who are earning a paycheck 
and indeed paying taxes but at a lower rate.

                              {time}  1545

  And the final analysis, as we have proven under Presidents Kennedy in 
1960, Reagan in 1980, and during the Bush administration in the early 
2001, 2000, when you cut taxes and you let people keep more of their 
money, you do grow jobs. And we did that. Nobody can deny that. They 
could be critical of a lot of things. And mistakes are always made. And 
it's easy to be Monday morning quarterbacking.
  But, without question, that type of economic philosophy and approach 
is what increases the Federal revenue because it grows jobs, it expands 
the job base.
  So, these were some of the things that we had proposed but yet never 
saw the light of day. And it's sad because I truly believe that that 
would work.
  In addition, Mr. Speaker, to the tax cuts, the other things of 
significance in the Republican alternative was to pledge--indeed, it's 
law, had we passed it--1 percent reduction. One percent. I know that 
doesn't sound like a lot but, believe me, up here inside the Beltway 
it's pretty hard to cut anything. But

[[Page H1598]]

we were talking about cutting 1 percent of spending across the board, 
except for our national defense. Preserve the spending on our national 
defense. Continue to keep this country safe and not pull the rug out 
from under the men and women who are doing the fighting and the 
suffering and the dying to keep us safe. But, across the board, every 
other spending category, 1 percent cut.
  These are the kind of things that I wanted to talk about to my 
colleagues and make sure, on both sides of the aisle, but I am 
particularly talking to my friends on the majority side so that they do 
understand and your constituents understand that we're not in the 
minority hoping for failure, we're not hoping that President Obama is 
unsuccessful. Nothing could be further from the truth. We want 
President Obama to be successful. And I hope that he is successful.
  But I don't want for some socialized program to be so successful that 
all of a sudden we get away from a market-driven economy and the 
democracy that we have all enjoyed and loved and what makes this 
country unique and wonderful. We don't want a European-type socialism.
  And so if you hear someone say, Well, I hope this thing fails, please 
don't get the idea, my colleagues, that it's directed toward our new 
President. Of course not. Of course not. But we just want to make sure 
that our country succeeds in the right way. And this is for our 
children and our grandchildren.
  I wanted to take a moment to paraphrase an article that I read in the 
newspaper today when I got up early this morning that I was looking at, 
Mr. Speaker. The Hill, the newspaper that we get daily when we're in 
session. And Hill and Roll Call and Politico, we all reads these 
things. There's some fine, fine writers on these newspapers. And this 
was an article penned by Cheri Jacobus. And here's what she said. I 
think it really cuts right to the chase in regard to $1 trillion worth 
of spending. And I'm going to quote just parts of her article:
  ``Congress should throw this greasy pile of pork into the grinder. 
Instead,'' instead, ``give every American household a $10,000 stimulus 
check to spend as we please. With approximately 100 million households 
nationwide, we hit that magic number of $1 trillion.''
  So you give $10,000 to every one of 100 million households, that is 
spending the $1 trillion. So you spend it in a different way. You give 
it, Mr. Speaker, to the families. And, along with that, we have a 2-
year moratorium on capital gains taxes, and then we will get this 
economy off life support.''
  And I want to point out in the Republican alternative this idea of 
giving $10,000 to each of 100 million families was not part of it, but 
the suspension of capital gains tax definitely was. And then you would 
see the stock market not go down 350 points when something like this 
passes, you would see it go up 350 points.
  So, doing this now, instead of letting the government decide how we 
spend the $1 trillion. Let the families decide how the $1 trillion are 
spent. ``Instead of condoms, green golf carts, mouse habitats, and 
government-run health care, Americans would spend based on individual 
priorities, thus spurring competition, resulting in higher-quality 
goods and services. Good banks succeed; bad banks fail. Well-priced, 
quality automobiles hit the streets; lemons fade away. Capitalism lives 
to fight another day and the greatest country on earth narrowly 
survives its near-death experience with socialism.''
  She goes on to say, ``So here's a challenge for every Member of 
Congress.'' Mr. Speaker, that is us, me and you and our colleagues on 
both sides of the aisle. ``So here's a challenge to every Member of 
Congress or, more accurately, a dare. Ask your constituents what they 
would do with $10,000. Compare their list to what is in the stimulus 
bill. Then see who has the best ideas for spending $1 trillion.
  Mr. Speaker, I wanted to use a couple of posters to help my 
colleagues understand and put in perspective the amount of money we're 
spending because, you know, $1,000 is a heck of a lot of money to me. 
You get up to a million, a billion, and a trillion, I don't even know 
how many zeroes we're talking about. But let's just use this poster to 
help us.
  Sizing up the stimulus. Well, this proposed stimulus, as I said to my 
colleagues, is $1.2 trillion, if we can focus on this first poster. 
$1.2 trillion. Now, let's put that in perspective.
  Back in the late sixties, and that terrible, terrible time of the 
Vietnam War. We lost almost 60,000 of our precious men and women in 
that battle, and $111 billion was spent. Now if you adjust that for 
inflation in today's dollars, it's $698 billion, compared to $1.2 
trillion. That is a few more zeroes.
  The invasion of Iraq, inflation adjusted, $597 billion. The money has 
gone up a little bit now, but it's certainly under $1 trillion. Well 
under.
  Now, let's go back. Let's back to the 1932 to the 1939, 1940 era. The 
era of the New Deal. $32 billion adjusted for inflation--it's been a 
long time ago. $500 billion. In comparison, this is the largest 
spending bill not just in the history, Mr. Speaker, of the United 
States. I believe, if I am not wrong on this, and I don't think I am, 
this is the largest spending bill that any government has enacted in 
the history of the world. In the history of the world.

  We're talking about increasing our national debt, not the deficit, 
but the national debt, which today is about $10.7 trillion, with a T. 
We're talking about increasing that by 10 percent in one snap of your 
finger. As soon as President Obama signs this bill into law Monday, all 
of a sudden we have increased the national debt 10 percent. Up to $12.5 
trillion.
  How in the world, Mr. Speaker, are we ever going to pay that off? I 
mean, it's downright depressing, is what it is. Not just scary, but 
it's downright depressing.
  And speaking of that money that was spent on the New Deal, and I know 
people love to say, Well, FDR was one of our greatest Presidents, and 
no doubt he was a man of great courage; great personal courage. 
Overcame tremendous adversity physically and was our President during 
very difficult times of World War II, and did some wonderful things. 
And I commend him for that.
  But I am not so sure the New Deal was such a good deal. In fact, it 
may very well have been a raw deal. Let me quote someone who should 
know better than I, because he was there. He lived through it. He 
advised President Roosevelt. He was President Roosevelt's Secretary of 
the Treasury, and his name was Henry Morgenthau.
  And listen to what the Secretary of the Treasury under President 
Roosevelt said to a hearing before the Ways and Means Committee of this 
House in 1939. And I will quote, ``We have tried spending money. We are 
spending more than we have ever spent before, and it does not work. I 
want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I 
want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our 
promises. I say, after 8 years of this administration, we have just as 
much unemployment as when we started, and an enormous debt to boot.''
  Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau, under President Roosevelt, 
1939, some 7 years into the New Deal. That is probably why Vice 
President Biden, Mr. Speaker, said that, Look, this thing has got a 30 
percent chance of not being successful. And allowing this recession to 
be deeper and more prolonged than if we indeed did nothing.
  Well, let me ask my colleagues to join with me in looking at a few 
more posters to just, again, put this spending in perspective. With 
this amount of money, the $789 billion--and when I say $1.2 trillion, 
that's the interest over 10 years on the debt. But when you do the 
math, fairly simple, and you say that you're going to create 4 million 
jobs, 4 million jobs with this, that means you're spending $275,000 for 
every job.
  That's $275,000 for every job. That's what it's going to cost. And a 
lot of these jobs are going to pay $30,000, $35,000, maybe even 
$20,000, $25,000 a year. That is shocking when you think about it. That 
that much money to create one job, $275,000 worth of spending.
  Here's another chart that I think is real instructive that I wanted 
my colleagues to also look at. Those of you in the back of the Chamber, 
you may not be able to see this, or the far left or far right, but this 
says, Can you afford to pay for the Democratic spending bill? At $825 
billion, or $789 billion, the economic stimulus plan sailing through 
Congress would cost each American family, each American family, more 
than $10,000 on average.

[[Page H1599]]

                              {time}  1600

  Here is how that price tag compares with the typical family expenses 
in a year:
  Stimulus spending: $10,500.
  What the family spends on food, clothing, and health care: $10,400. 
What the family spends on shelter, whether they are renting or owning 
their own home: $11,657.
  So one-third of their expenditure in a year, that is what it is going 
to cost them in the final analysis, $10,500, every year, every family, 
to pay for this $1.1 trillion, $1.2 trillion.
  That is why, going back, remember when I said or read the article 
about, literally, why doesn't the Federal Government just write a 
$10,000 check and give it to every family, and say: Look, I don't know 
your situation. You may have a mortgage past due, a car payment past 
due. You may need to pay down a credit card debt. You may have a child 
that wants to go back to college and you don't have the tuition for the 
next semester. Indeed, you may even have a family member that needs an 
operation or some dental work or something and you can't pay for it, 
and you can take money out of that $10,000. Or maybe you just simply 
want to save it for a rainy day. Lord knows, we have got a rainy day 
now. Or you might, if your situation is such and you think the old 
clinker of a car is falling apart and we want to buy American, and 
General Motors or Ford Motor Company has got a great new car that gets 
good gas mileage and we will go ahead and buy a car, or whatever, a 
washing machine. And all of a sudden, the economy starts moving. And so 
this shows it, I think, Mr. Speaker, in a very vivid, vivid way.
  Before I finish up, Mr. Speaker, and I didn't want to take the entire 
hour, but I wanted to talk just a little bit about some of the health 
care things that are in this bill.
  There is money toward moving us as a Nation for complete electronic 
medical records. I am for that, Mr. Speaker. I think that would be a 
good thing. I think that would save lives and save money, and I clearly 
feel that that is something that we want to do. But there are a number 
of provisions, and I will just mention one that really, really concerns 
me, and that is this comparative effectiveness commission. Comparative 
effectiveness, where the Federal Government, and I think $1 billion, if 
I am not mistaken, I think $1 billion goes into creating this other 
layer of government bureaucracy called comparative effectiveness that 
would decide which medical procedures or medications were cost 
effective and in certain instances will just simply say that, ``Well, 
we don't think that is cost effective,'' that MRI that mom had in the 
emergency room last week or the CAT scan or electroencephalogram 
because a child had a seizure.
  To say that it is not effective, who are these bureaucrats that would 
have the ability to do that? Have they ever had a stethoscope around 
their neck? Have they ever had a white lab coat on? No. They are just 
number crunchers, and all of a sudden they are going to come in between 
you, our constituents, men and women, and your health care provider, 
your physician, whether it is a pediatrician or obstetrician or general 
surgeon or a family doctor.
  So as we look at this massive bill, what we are seeing is a lot of 
things in there, Mr. Speaker, that really don't have anything to do 
with putting people back to work. That 7 percent spending on 
infrastructure, that ought to be 25 percent of the spending. It ought 
to be much more than it is. But yet, there are things in there, and I 
could go through a list of them and it is almost appalling.
  I mention that about that health care. It is just trying to set 
policy in this bill, moving us in a direction that I don't think, I do 
not think, the American people want. And I think, the American people, 
my colleagues, remember back in 1993, 1992, under President Clinton, 
when current Secretary of State Clinton now but first lady at that time 
was sort of put in charge of trying to develop a single payor national 
health care system just like they have in the United Kingdom or in 
Canada or other countries where it doesn't work so well and care is 
rationed.
  My fear, and as you read this bill and you try to read through, the 
devil is in the details, and you see these things and you see what is 
happening in the health care provision, it is definitely trying to move 
us in that direction once again.
  So again, our opposition to the bill is not that we don't want to 
help people and help them right now, that we don't have compassion. 
Indeed, there is no one more compassionate in this Chamber than the 
minority leader, Mr. Boehner. In fact, many times he is almost to the 
point of tears, he is so compassionate.
  So we just want to look at this thing, as we have, and realize that 
so much of the money, Mr. Speaker, in this bill is all about pushing an 
agenda and spending money, some of which may be worthwhile, but it 
should go through the regular order. That is why we are up here, 
mainly, to authorize and appropriate spending. That is a major 
responsibility of the Members of Congress in the House and Senate. And 
we should do that under regular order. But it is like the chief of 
staff now, our former colleague here in the House, the chief of staff 
to President Obama, Rahm Emanuel, the gentleman from Illinois, the same 
State as the President, said it would be a tragedy to let any crisis go 
unused, or something to that effect. I am paraphrasing, but it would be 
a tragedy to let a crisis go to waste. In other words, take a crisis 
and try to do some good things and put people back to work; but, at the 
same time, pump all kind of other stuff in there that you have been 
trying to get passed for years and have not been successful because the 
majority of the Congress doesn't want it, so you throw it in there as 
emergency spending and drag it along as we tug at heartstrings.

  And that is just not right, Mr. Speaker. That is unfair. It is 
deceiving the American public, and it is putting a burden on them that 
I will have no part of. And my colleagues on this side of the aisle, 
178 of us, Republicans, and six to eight conservative, fiscally 
conservative Democrats feel the same way.
  I just feel that if we had had an opportunity, Mr. Speaker, if we had 
had an opportunity to present an alternative, we could do that in a 
bipartisan way. We don't hate each other, as you know, Mr. Speaker. We 
respect each other, and in many cases best friends are on opposite 
sides of the aisle. We can do these things. But somehow this top down, 
my way or the highway, closed rules, no opportunity to go through 
committee, we are losing out, and it is not right, because the minority 
represents, what, 48 percent? A lot of people, a lot of people in this 
country, Mr. Speaker, elected Republican Members of this House and 
Senate.
  So as I conclude, I just want to the say to all of my colleagues, on 
the Republican side we voted ``no,'' and we voted no for a very good 
reason. We have great fear, just as Vice President Biden said, that 
this won't work. And it is not like, well, it just didn't work, and we 
lost that game and we will play another one. No. This is too big a 
risk. It puts too big a burden on our future generations, and it has 
the likelihood of leaving us in this recession for a long time to come.
  We had an opportunity. My colleague, my Senate colleague from 
Georgia, Johnny Isakson, had an amendment on the Senate side that would 
give every person, every family that bought a new home a $15,000 tax 
credit. It passed on the Senate side I think by a voice vote, unanimous 
consent, everybody. I heard Senator Schumer say what a wonderful, 
wonderful idea that the gentleman from Georgia, Senator Johnny Isakson, 
had, because this whole mess started with the downturn of the housing 
market; and until we get those houses moving and sold, that will get us 
out of this mess. And the Senate knew it. And yet, when they got to 
conference committee, what happened? They pulled that amendment out. 
Pulled that amendment out.
  I really believe if that and maybe an opportunity for people to get a 
fixed-rate mortgage at 4 percent or 5 percent, 30-year fixed rate, let 
them have that opportunity over the next year or so, the Johnny Isakson 
amendment, maybe we can pass it as a stand-alone bill. The Republican 
alternative to this spendulous bill where we emphasize tax cuts and 
spending cuts and we spend more money on infrastructure, I think if we 
came back and did that, we would be out of this the recession in 12 
months to 18 months.

[[Page H1600]]

  And so that is why I am here this afternoon, Mr. Speaker, just to 
share those thoughts with my colleagues. And I hope and pray that 
President Obama will be successful; but when it is something that I 
have great fear of hurting the country, taking us down a road that our 
Founding Fathers never intended us to go, then I am going to stand up 
and I am going to say, ``No, Mr. President,'' as I did today.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________