[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 44 (Thursday, March 12, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H3379-H3380]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         OMNIBUS SPENDING BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, the phones in my offices have 
been ringing off the wall today because people are very upset that we 
just passed the omnibus spending bill for $410 billion that has between 
8,000 and 9,000 pork barrel projects in it.
  The people of this country can hardly believe the way we are spending 
money up here. They all want to see the economy turn around, but I 
think they realize that the way to turn the economy around is by 
instilling enthusiasm and confidence in the American people by cutting 
taxes across the board, including taxes for businesses, such as the 
capital gains tax.
  Mr. Speaker, so far, we passed a TARP bill for $700 billion, and that 
TARP bill that was supposed to help get the economy moving and help the 
financial institutions--we found that $8 billion of that was loaned by 
Citigroup to Dubai public sector entities; $1 billion was invested by 
JPMorgan in India; $7 billion was invested by Bank of America in the 
China Construction Bank Corporation.

                              {time}  1500

  And the American people are wondering why the $700 billion that their 
representatives voted for is being used to help other countries. That 
money was supposed to help our economy.
  In addition to that, we spent $14 billion for the auto bailout, 
almost $1 trillion when you add in interest for the stimulus bill and 
the omnibus bill I just talked about. And the budget is coming up, and 
it is going to cost about $3.9 trillion, of which $635 billion is for a 
new socialized medicine health program. But that is not the end of it.
  The stimulus package that we passed, almost $1 trillion, was supposed 
to really help get the economy moving, and now we hear that there 
probably is

[[Page H3380]]

going to be another stimulus package. We don't know how much that is 
going to cost.
  Speaker Pelosi is quoted as saying that she is open to a second 
stimulus package. That was on CNN. It says, ``The Democrats eye another 
stimulus bill on the Hill.'' ``Pelosi open to another stimulus,'' in 
Roll Call. ``Pelosi raises the prospect of another stimulus economic 
package, a second one, this year,'' in CQ. ``Pelosi leaves the door 
open to a second stimulus,'' in Reuters. And the Wall Street Journal 
talks about that by saying, ``Lawmakers weigh the need for a second 
stimulus to spur job growth.''
  If you add all this together, Mr. Speaker, we are spending God only 
knows how many trillions of dollars that we do not have, and we are 
mortgaging the future of our kids and grandkids.
  I have been down here night after night talking about this, and I 
cannot understand why we don't approach the solving of these problems 
in a logical and orderly manner as we have in the past under people 
such as John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. They cut taxes to stimulate 
economic growth, and it worked, giving us economic recovery and long 
periods of economic growth. But what we are doing is just throwing 
taxpayers' money at it as fast as we possibly can, and it is money 
which we don't have. And we are going to print that money, the money 
that we can't borrow from somebody else.
  We already owe China about $800 billion, $900 billion. We owe Japan 
about $600 billion. They are not going to continue to loan us money. We 
have borrowed money from the Social Security trust fund, so much so 
that it is probably bankrupt if we were to really look at it today. 
Yet, we continue to spend money and spend the future generations right 
down the tube.
  The inflation rate that we are going to face in the next 2, 3, 4 
years I think is going to be untenable. I really believe we are going 
to have double-digit inflation as well as double-digit unemployment 
because of the way we are going about solving these problems. Mr. 
Speaker, I just cannot understand it.
  Then, on top of that, what did we do to stimulate buying homes? We 
cut the amount of mortgage deductions that people can deduct from their 
taxes by about 30 percent. So if a person has a mortgage deduction on 
their house, we cut that. We reduced it by 30 percent. There is a real 
inducement for people to buy a home. Then, as far as charitable giving 
is concerned, we reduced the amount that people can deduct from their 
taxes for giving money to charities, and that is going to put the 
charitable institutions in a real bind, and that means the government 
will probably pick up more of the responsibility of taking care of the 
people of this country. That is just unconscionable, in my opinion. We 
need to be doing what is necessary to stimulate economic growth and not 
put this country into a financial trick bag.
  Mr. Speaker, my colleagues and I have been down here night after 
night talking about this. We feel like it is falling upon deaf ears, 
but we must come down here and try to explain to our colleagues and the 
American people how really horrible is the approach that we are taking 
right now.

                          ____________________