[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 58 (Tuesday, April 21, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H4558]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               A LITTLE BIT OF OPTIMISM ABOUT OUR ECONOMY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Inglis) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. INGLIS. Mr. Speaker, I rise to report on a telephone conversation 
that I had and actually then an in-person conversation I had with a 
fellow who was talking to me about his great concern about the economy. 
And of course, I started the conversation by saying, yes, I share that 
concern. But he could tell that I had a little bit of optimism about 
where we are. And he asked why? How could you be optimistic? And I told 
him two reasons to be optimistic that are immediately apparent with the 
economy, I think. One is, you know, crisis creates opportunity to fix 
things. And it could be that we can use this current financial problem 
that we've got and the incredible spending that we're doing here in 
Washington, to finally focus on change to the crucial programs like 
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Until we're talking those 
programs, we're not talking balancing the budget.
  But in the midst of the crisis created by our wild spending, perhaps 
we can bring our attention to the underlying problem, the problem 
that's not new, that's been going on in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social 
Security. So that's one reason for optimism.
  Another, I told him, is that really we've got an incredible 
opportunity to grow our way out of this current problem by solving the 
energy challenge. If we address the energy security question, we can 
grow out of this problem.
  You know, I was here in the Congress during the nineties and served 
on the Budget Committee. Part of our balancing act in getting to 
balance in 1999 and 2000 was fiscal restraint, and that's because of 
Republicans taking control of the House and having some fiscal 
restraint.
  But it's also true that what was really happening is there was a 
massive expansion of the economy because of the tech boom. Because of 
the advances in PCs and the Internet, the productivity that came with 
those, and, therefore, growth without inflation, we were able to expand 
our economy. That economy threw off revenue to the Federal Government 
and, as a result, we reached balance.
  Now we have an opportunity to do the same thing, just energy being 
the next step up in a plateau of economic development. We climbed up 
onto the plateau of the tech boom. Now we've got the opportunity to 
climb up onto another high plateau of energy security. If we do that 
successfully, I believe that we can generate economic growth that will, 
in turn, generate revenues for this Federal Government. And the result 
is that we will, once again, balance the budget if we pursue fiscal 
restraint in coming out of this crisis, together with economic growth 
that will come from addressing our energy security challenge.
  Mr. Speaker, in the weeks and months to come, I hope to speak more 
about a very specific proposal that can do just that, with an elegant 
price signal sent throughout our economy about new energy technologies; 
and with that price signal, I think we can get about solving this 
fiscal problem by economic growth and, of course, also addressing the 
underlying problem of out-of-control entitlement spending that needs to 
be brought under control.
  So, Mr. Speaker, tough times; but it's also true there's every reason 
to be optimistic.

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