[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 56 (Thursday, April 2, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H4488]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      DEMOCRAT SPENDING SINCE TARP

  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. Madam Speaker, this has been a historic day. 
We just passed a huge bill, cost the American taxpayers $3.5 trillion. 
It increased taxes at a time when we shouldn't be increasing taxes, and 
I won't restate everything that's been said here today because I think 
my colleagues on both sides of the aisle expressed their positions very 
well.
  But what I would like to say--and I'm not going to take the whole 5 
minutes--is that in October we passed the TARP bill, October of last 
year, $700 billion. In January, we passed the State Children's Health 
Insurance Reauthorization, $73 billion. In February, on the 9th, we 
passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the stimulus bill, 
for $820 billion plus the interest it will incur, which is about $348 
billion. That's $1.16 trillion. On February 9, we consolidated the 
appropriations for fiscal year 2009 in the omnibus bill, $410 billion 
plus $250 billion in interest. That's $625 billion in total. And then 
you add to that the budget which we passed today for $3.5 trillion.
  We are in the process of bankrupting this country. We are printing so 
much money and incurring so much debt that our kids and grandkids, I 
don't know how they're going to be able to live with it.
  I heard my colleagues on the other side of the aisle applauding when 
we passed this budget today. Those of us on this side of the aisle who 
have been around here for a while, we were doing anything but 
applauding. We were thinking about what we've done to this country.
  You know, China has about $700 billion of our debt. Japan has about 
$600 billion of our debt. And they don't want to buy any more of our 
debt. The only reason they're doing it I think is because this is the 
only game in town, but there is a limit to how much these other 
countries in the world will spend purchasing our debt.
  And so what's going to happen? It's already happening. We're 
increasing the money supply. Up until just recently, we had increased 
the money supply by almost 300 percent. That means that we've increased 
the money supply three times in just recent years. And when that money 
gets into circulation, along with the money we're going to be printing 
because of all these expenditures I just enumerated, we're going to 
have a tremendous amount of dollars chasing fewer and fewer goods and 
services. More dollars, less production, and that means we're going to 
have inflation.
  So I'd just like to say to my colleagues tonight, you may be 
celebrating this great budget that you passed, but it's going to end up 
costing our kids and our grandkids more in taxes and inflation, and 
they're going to look back on this day and on what we're doing and 
they're going to say, why in the world did you do this to us, why did 
you do it to us?
  And I hope I and my colleagues are alive to look back and remember 
what happened today and what's been happening in recent days, weeks and 
months. It's a tragedy, and I'm very depressed over it. I hope that 
something will change the way things are going. I hope people will see 
the light and will start cutting taxes instead of increasing taxes and 
spending, but I doubt that's going to happen.

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