[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 11]
[House]
[Pages 14868-14869]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                SPENDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Carter) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to start first by apologizing 
to Mr. Ryan, whom I just wandered in here and inadvertently walked in 
front of while he was speaking. So before I start with my speech, I 
want to apologize to Mr. Ryan for that inappropriate thing I did.
  I agree with President Obama when he said this about spending in May 
of 2008 while on the campaign trail in North Dakota: President Obama, 
the candidate at that time, said: ``$9 trillion of debt, that's just 
bad. That's not fiscally conservative. And so we're going to have to 
change our policies. The first thing you do when you're in a hole is 
what?''
  And the crowd reacted, ``Stop digging.''
  Unfortunately, what President Obama said is not what he has done. In 
fact, not only did we not stop digging, we threw away our shovel and 
got a backhoe and started digging double time because in 2008, the debt 
was too high; but now President Obama has increased spending so much 
that we have broken historical records on spending.
  We started off with the stimulus bill of $787 billion to stimulate 
the economy. It was promised that its big goal was to cap unemployment 
at 8 percent. We weren't going to go above 8 percent unemployment, and 
that's why we had to spend all that money. But, unfortunately, we are 
sitting here today with 9.4 percent unemployment and rising.

[[Page 14869]]

  The debt that we have accumulated since the President has come into 
office has been unbelievable. The $8.5 trillion in 2009 will grow to 
$16 trillion in 2019. In only 5 months, President Obama and the 
Democratic majority have managed to spend and borrow more public debt 
than in the entire history of the United States. That's the past 233 
years. So in less than 150 days, they have obligated this country in 
debt more than the past 233 years.
  A couple of weeks ago, I was on the floor of the House talking about 
the proposed bailout of the automobile industry, which I still contend 
is an unconstitutional takeover of private industry, based upon the 
Youngstown case. The administration has recklessly used the taxpayers' 
money to basically put the administration in charge of General Motors, 
Chrysler, AIG, Citibank, and the list goes on and on and on.
  I don't think the change the American people were looking for when we 
heard that change was coming was the change where the government took 
over the micro-management of industry. I really don't believe that was 
the change Americans were looking for, and yet that's the change we 
got.
  Even worse, when these people who see where the government is going, 
where the Democrats are taking this country, they say, We'll give our 
money back. We don't need your bailout money. We want to give it back 
to you. And they are having trouble trying to give it back. The Obama 
administration won't take it.
  So with all this accumulated debt and with all this spending that we 
have done, between now and probably the end of July, we are going to 
take up basically a government health care plan which is going to 
include another $1 trillion in entitlement health care spending at a 
time when all experts agree that Medicare, as we have it right now, has 
real problems and is going to eventually go broke because there are a 
whole lot more people taking out of the program than are paying into 
the program and it only gets worse as the baby boomers grow. So we are 
going to add to that $1 trillion and, don't worry, we'll figure it out. 
And, of course, we just heard about the energy tax that's coming our 
way.
  You know the real money that we ought to be worrying about? It's not 
these folks we are bailing out. Who we ought to be worried about are 
those guys who have lost their jobs. That's the money we ought to be 
worried about, and that's what the folks back home are worried about.

                          ____________________