[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 3 (Wednesday, January 13, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H111-H112]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                AMERICA CANNOT SPEND ITS WAY OUT OF DEBT

  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, you know, I really get a big kick 
in listening to my Democrat colleagues when they talk about spending 
all this money on infrastructure and how we are not spending enough and 
how we need to come up with another stimulus bill. The fact of the 
matter is, since they took control of Congress, the national debt has 
gone up by almost $4 trillion. You can't spend your way out of debt. 
You can't create jobs by digging yourselves into a bigger and bigger 
hole, and that is exactly what they are talking about doing.
  Now they say they have created jobs. They said that unemployment 
would not go above 8 percent, and they say they have created or saved 2 
million jobs or thereabouts. The fact of the matter is 7 million jobs 
have been lost; lost. Seven million jobs have been lost.
  Now, even if you said and accepted their premise that they saved or 
created 2 million jobs, you would still be

[[Page H112]]

5 million jobs in the hole, and the unemployment rate isn't 8 percent. 
It is 10 percent, and it was up above that, and I believe it probably 
will get there again.
  You know, I just can't understand why they don't get it. John F. 
Kennedy, a Democrat, he got it. He said time and again when he was 
President, if you give people more disposable income, they will spend 
it to buy more products. And if you give more income back to business 
and industry through tax cuts, as I was just talking about with 
individuals, that will give them more money for investment and to hire 
employees. And if people and industry go out and spend that tax cut, 
then they are going to have to produce more products; more 
refrigerators, more cars, more vacuum sweepers, whatever it is. And if 
people buy more because they have more money to spend collectively 
across the country, 300 million people, then you are going to see 
employment rise; employment rise, not unemployment.
  John F. Kennedy understood that, and that is why early in his 
administration he put through tax cuts. And then when Ronald Reagan 
came in after the debacle called the Carter administration where we 
have unemployment at 12 percent and inflation at 14 percent, worse than 
we have today even, Reagan came in and said we are going to cut taxes. 
And I think he even mentioned John F. Kennedy. And so Reagan, Yeah, 
well, we are going to cut taxes instead of raising taxes. So they cut 
taxes and we worked our way out of a very severe recession. We created 
millions of jobs and had an economic expansion that lasted 20 years 
because we cut taxes and gave people their money back, some of it, and 
we gave business and industry some of their money back so they could 
make investment. That's the way you do it.
  And yet the Democrats and the Obama administration are talking about 
the tax cuts that were put into place early in the Bush administration. 
They want to let them expire this year, which is going to be a drain on 
the economy, take more money out of people's pockets, more money out of 
business and industry, and exacerbate the economy, the economic 
problems we are facing.
  And so when I hear my colleagues come down--I love to listen to their 
rhetoric. Their logic eludes me, though, because you are not going to 
solve the unemployment problems or the economic problems in this 
country by loading more debt and more taxes on the backs of the 
American people. You are going to cause the future generations to look 
back at us and say, Why did you do that to us, because you are going to 
have inflation and you are going to have higher taxes and you are going 
to have a deteriorating economy, and you are going to have the 
government taking over more and more responsibility, which is what a 
lot of socialists in this administration would like to see. They 
believe government can do the job better than the private sector. 
Obviously, most Americans don't agree with that if you look at the 
polls lately just on the health care bill alone.
  So I would just like to say to my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that if we 
are serious about solving the economic problems, let's take a look at 
history. Let's look at what they did in the Kennedy administration. 
Let's look at what they did in the Reagan administration, and let's say 
we are going to extend the tax cuts. We are going to cut taxes further 
right now because it will give people more disposable income, give more 
money for business and industry to invest, and people and industry will 
buy more; therefore, they will produce more products and more people 
will go back to work and you will lower the unemployment rate.
  The unemployment rate today, it is not 10 percent, incidentally. 
There are a lot of people who have been getting unemployment checks 
that aren't included anymore. It is more like 15 to 17 percent, and 
this administration is responsible for it.

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