[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2093-2101]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           ECONOMIC STIMULUS

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, next week the Senate begins the debate 
of the so-called stimulus package. I wish to talk about that for a few 
minutes. It is $1.2 trillion of borrowed taxpayer money to be spent in 
an effort to help get our economy restarted. Here is my position on it, 
and I believe the position of most Republicans and of some Democrats. 
We believe that in order for the stimulus to be effective, it should be 
reoriented on housing. First, fix the real problem: housing. If housing 
is restarted, if home values are stabilized, and if people are buying 
homes, that will do more to help restart the economy than anything 
else. Second, we should let people keep more of their own money. A true 
stimulus is permanent tax relief. If people have more of their own 
money in their pockets, they will have more confidence. They will be 
able to buy more. After reorienting toward housing, that will also help 
restart the economy.
  Since we are borrowing so much of this money, especially, we believe 
it ought to be oriented directly toward those items that would 
specifically create jobs now. It should not go toward good sounding 
ideas such as Head Start and Pell grants for college students that we 
may want to take up later, maybe as early as the following week, in a 
regular appropriations bill. So that is our belief: reorient the 
stimulus toward housing, let people keep more of their own money, and 
get the stuff out of the bill that has nothing to do with creating jobs 
now, in the next few months or in the first year.
  We know Americans are hurting. Every single Senator knows that. Our 
country's economic turmoil is hitting every family where it matters, in 
the family budgets. More than 860,000 properties were repossessed by 
lenders in 2008, more than double the 2007 level. Manufacturing is at a 
28-year low. Tennessee is a State that relies heavily on manufacturing. 
The unemployment rate is 7.2 percent, too high. It has been higher. I 
can remember at a time when I was Governor of Tennessee in 1982, the 
unemployment rate was 12 percent, but 7.2 percent is too high. There 
were 1.9 million jobs lost in the last 4 months of 2008. The long-term 
unemployed, people out of work for 27 weeks or more, rose to 2.6 
million in December of 2008. So there are a number of steps we need to 
take as a government, and we have been taking them.
  At a hearing this week, where the Presiding Officer and I are both 
members of the Budget Committee--and we probably agree those hearings 
were excellent--Douglas Elmendorf, Director of the Congressional Budget 
Office, reminded us of the steps the Government is already taking. The 
Federal Reserve negotiated the sale of Bear Sterns to JPMorgan Chase, 
$29 billion, to form a new limited liability company. Fannie Mae and 
Freddie Mac, the agencies that guaranteed half the home loans in the 
country, were taken over by their regulator and the Treasury put up 
$100 billion to stabilize that situation. The Federal Reserve extended 
$60 billion in a line of credit to the American International Group, 
the insurance company called AIG. We had a debate in October where on 
both sides of the aisle, two-thirds of Republicans as well as many 
Democrats voted to give the Secretary of the Treasury $700 billion to 
invest in troubled assets or to use in a variety of ways to try to keep 
our economy from going straight down. It has gone down, but it didn't 
go straight down; we believe this is partly because of the action the 
Congress and the President took at that time.
  What we had was, in effect, a wreck on the highway. There is an old 
Roy Acuff song by that title. I think that is the best way to explain 
what was happening. It was like a wreck on the interstate outside 
Knoxville and suddenly traffic is backed up all the way to Lenoir City 
or even Kingston. One lane was the money for the bank loan, the next 
lane was the money for your auto loan, and the next lane was for 
meeting payroll. As long as that wreck was on the highway, none of the 
money could get where it needed to go, and nobody could borrow on 
anything. It is better today than it would have been, but we still have 
a deeply serious problem.
  The law we passed in October temporarily raised the insurance for 
deposits from $100,000 to $250,000. Steps were taken to guarantee money 
market funds. The Treasury, Federal Reserve, and Federal Deposit 
Insurance Corporation announced agreements with Citibank and Bank of 
America. They created a liquidity program for the banking system.
  The Federal Government, in all of its variety of agencies, has been 
very busy since October using taxpayer dollars, where necessary, or the 
Federal Reserve balance sheet, or Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation 
funds collected from banks to try to create a situation in which our 
economy can restart.
  We know, having visited with President Obama and his team of 
advisers, that they are thinking of even more things we may need to do. 
But next week in the Senate we will be talking about whether it is a 
good idea to borrow $1.2 trillion and spend it as the Appropriations 
and Finance Committees have recommended we spend it as a way of trying 
to restart the economy. What I am here today to say is: we believe 
there ought to be a stimulus, but we believe it ought to be reoriented 
toward housing, that it ought to be reoriented toward permanent tax 
cuts, and that we ought to take out of this so-called stimulus anything 
that doesn't stimulate jobs now.
  Let me try to give an idea of how much money $1.2 trillion is. It is 
more money than we spent on the Vietnam war in today's dollars. This 
comes from an article in Politico this week. It is more money than we 
spent on the invasion of Iraq. It is more money than we spent on the 
entire New Deal in today's dollars, and a lot more money than we spent 
on the Marshall plan. It is nearly as much money as we've spent on NASA 
ever since it started. It is a lot more money than we spent going to 
the Moon. This is a lot of money. We throw dollars around up here. 
Years ago Senator Dirksen said: A billion here, a billion there, sooner 
or later it adds up to real money. This is a trillion, a number that is 
hard for us to imagine. It is borrowed money, which I will get to in a 
moment.
  Let me give one example of how I have been trying to describe how 
much money $1.2 trillion is. The Presiding Officer was Governor of 
Virginia. I was

[[Page 2094]]

Governor of Tennessee. I looked around the Budget Committee the other 
day and almost every member there had been in State government in one 
way or another. In other words, we used to deal with real dollars. We 
couldn't print anything. At the end of the year, we had to balance our 
budgets. Sometimes we had to veto $25,000 programs for epilepsy. I had 
to do that in 1981, 1982, and 1983, when we had an economic turndown. 
That is why this amount of money is hard for me to get my arms around. 
I think it is hard for most Americans.
  Let me give you an idea about how much money it is. The previous 
Governor of Tennessee, one who came after me, Governor Sundquist, 
thought we needed a State income tax. He recommended Tennessee should 
have a State income tax. It was about 4 percent. It would have raised 
about $400 million a year. There was never a more unpopular act in our 
State than the Governor Sundquist proposal that we have a State income 
tax. Many people said he was courageous for recommending it, but it was 
rejected. People wouldn't even invite him to dinner for a few months. I 
would, but many other people wouldn't. That was $400 million a year. 
The State of Tennessee will receive almost $4 billion of this money. I 
am sure it will make life easier for the current Governor and the 
current legislature, but think about that. The State only collects 
close to $12 billion a year in State tax dollars, and it is going to 
get $4 billion over the next 2 years from this so-called stimulus 
package. This would be the equivalent of imposing about a 20-percent 
new income tax on the people of Tennessee for 2 years to raise that 
same amount of money. There would be a revolution in Tennessee if we 
did this. That is the amount of money we're talking about.
  We are not talking about giving the State of Tennessee $40 million or 
$4 million or $400 million. Its shortfall this year is $900 million, 
which is the worst it has ever had. We are talking about shipping $4 
billion of borrowed taxpayer money to Tennessee. My point is, that is a 
lot of money.
  There is another aspect to this amount of money. I listed a number of 
things that the Federal Reserve Board and the Congress have done to try 
to create a better economic situation, to get housing going, to help 
stabilize banks, and even to deal with automobile companies. Almost all 
of those dollars we used either came from the Federal Reserve Board, 
which is not part of the Federal budget, not part of taxpayer dollars, 
or it was an investment.
  In Tennessee, people don't like the word ``bailout.'' It has come to 
be right up there with the top number. I voted twice, because I thought 
our country needed it, first to give President Bush, then to give 
President Obama the amount of money he needed to actually invest in 
banks or nonfinance companies so we could get the credit moving again. 
But in that case, we were investing dollars. We were not spending 
dollars. We hope and believe that we will get almost all of those 
dollars back for the taxpayer. When those dollars are put in a bank, 
for example, they pay 5 percent or 8 percent or even 10 percent 
interest, in some cases, back to the taxpayer. Maybe we will lose some 
of that money, but we don't intend to. It is not our goal. That is the 
purpose of it, investment. In this case, this is money gone.
  This is borrowed taxpayer dollars, more than $1.2 trillion. I get to 
$1.2 trillion because the Senate bill is $900 billion, and the interest 
over the next 10 years is another $300 billion. That is the real cost 
of the stimulus package over the next 10 years. It is borrowed money.
  Let me go to the borrowed money part.
  We print money in Washington. We Governors cannot. That is one of the 
adjustments you make when you come here. It just takes a little while 
to do, and I understand the difference. The truth is, there is a 
reasonable level of debt a strong industrial country such as the United 
States can tolerate and still continue to grow. As the country grows, 
the debt reduces as a percentage of our output.
  While it might be important for the State of Tennessee, as we always 
did, to balance our budget and almost never have any debt--and we did 
not even have an income tax--the Federal Government structure is 
different. I recognize that. But there is some reasonable limit to the 
amount of debt we should have, and there are good reasons there is a 
reasonable limit to that.
  I think it is important to understand exactly what the debt we have 
is. USA Today did a story last year that talked about each family's 
share of Government debt and Government obligations. By 
``obligations,'' I mean what we owe for programs such as Medicare, what 
we owe for Medicaid, what we owe veterans. It is real money. It is 
money we are obligated to pay. It comes down to more than $500,000 per 
family a year.
  So I think the way to talk about this stimulus package is: Should we 
ask every American family to increase their $531,000 debt in order to 
spend money for a stimulus package to try to restart the economy? I 
believe we should increase our debt for some purposes, such as 
restarting housing or permanent tax cuts--that actually allows people 
to keep their own money. Or possibly increase our debt for programs 
that would, perhaps, actually do things in the next 6 months or 12 
months to stimulate the economy. There are roads, and bridges, and 
national park maintenance that could happen right now that would create 
jobs that would be genuinely stimulative. But that is a very severe 
test we should ask the American people.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the USA Today article 
detailing the obligation every American family owes be printed in the 
Record following my remarks.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Now, there is another problem of running up too much 
debt. At the hearing where the Acting President pro tempore, the 
Senator from Virginia, and I were at earlier this week, I asked a 
question of the three witnesses: What can we learn from the rest of the 
world about how much debt is too much debt for the United States of 
America? The general answer was, today our debt is measured at about 40 
percent of our annual gross domestic product. The estimates they gave 
suggested if the stimulus packages and if the other things that are 
going on continue to happen, we will be up to 60 or 70 percent of GDP. 
If the entitlement growth--the automatic spending we have in the 
Government from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--keeps growing, 
and we keep adding at the rate we are doing, we will soon be at 100 
percent of GDP. In other words, every year, government debt could equal 
everything we produced in this great country of ours--which produces 25 
percent of all the wealth in the world every single year. We forget how 
fortunate we are. Twenty-five percent of all the wealth in the world, 
every single year, is produced in the United States of America and 
distributed among just 5 percent of the people in the world, which is 
us, those of us who live here. So we would have to take all that 
production for a whole year and use it to pay off our national debt.
  Those economists who were testifying before us said that is too high. 
Forty percent is OK. They thought 60 percent is getting into a little 
bit of a problem. Eighty percent is too much, and 100 percent is a real 
problem. The practical problem is, as that number goes up--for example, 
as the entitlement spending goes up and other debt goes up--it squeezes 
out our ability to do anything else. I worked last year across party 
lines with Senator Bingaman and many others, and Senator Warner worked 
in the private sector in this way, to try to do something about 
American competitiveness. We put into the law that we needed to double 
our investments in scientific research, and if we wanted to keep this 
high standard of living, we have a lot of work to do in high 
technology.
  If we keep spending all the money on welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, 
Social Security, and debt, we are not going to have anything left for 
the great universities in the country on a yearly basis

[[Page 2095]]

or for investments in our future. Those are annual investments. We will 
be squeezing them out. That is another problem with debt. With a lower 
debt, we have more money for not just the investments in our future but 
for our national parks, our clean air, and the other things we need to 
do to have a desirable country.
  Let me go back to the stimulus package and ask: What do we need to 
do? We need to, in the words of Senator Gregg--and I believe it is fair 
to characterize Senator Conrad, the chairman of the Budget Committee, 
in the testimony this week--we need to reorient the stimulus package 
toward real estate, toward housing, and toward credit having to do with 
banks. First, fix the problem: housing.

       Every big mess has a way into it, and I believe--and many 
     on this side, and I think some on the other side also 
     believe--the way into it is housing. How would one fix that? 
     Well, one suggestion by Glenn Hubbard--former chairman of the 
     Council of Economic Advisors and now at Columbia University 
     is have the Treasury back, for a period of a year or 18 
     months, a 4-percent, 30-year fixed rate mortgage for 
     creditworthy customers.

  In other words, a bank in Nashville would say to you, if you are 
creditworthy: We will give you a 30-year mortgage at 4 percent. If 
today's prevailing rate were 5.2 or 5.3 percent--which it is in the 
marketplace--the Government would make up the difference, and it would 
probably guarantee the loan. That would create a new demand for 
housing.
  I was talking with someone in the mortgage business yesterday who 
pointed out that for one of our large lenders in America, when the 
rates went down naturally after the Federal Reserve action a few weeks 
ago, the number of mortgages issued by that bank quadrupled.
  So if we were to say to the American people: If you are creditworthy, 
you can buy a house; you can get a 4-percent mortgage for a principal 
residence, and we are going to keep that option open for a year. That 
will cost us some money. That could be part of this stimulus. It would 
create demand in housing. It would create liquidity. It would get banks 
lending. We believe it would make a real difference. It would be a 
better way to start the stimulus package.
  A second idea, as Senator Isakson and others have suggested, is to 
create a tax credit for home buyers. We would say $15,000. So if you 
are sitting around thinking today, well, homes in Richmond have 
actually gotten down to a pretty good level, and I like that house--you 
could get a $15,000 tax credit when you buy the house, and when you 
file your income tax return, you get $15,000 back. This is real money, 
and you do not have to pay it back. If you had a combination of a 4-
percent mortgage and a $15,000 tax credit for the next year, maybe we 
could get housing stabilized, maybe we could get demand stirring, and 
maybe we could get people confidence that there is liquidity in the 
market. That might not solve every problem, but it is the place to 
start. We would say first, fix housing. That is the way to restart the 
economy.
  Senator Gregg has suggested we take some of the Federal Deposit 
Insurance Corporation's ideas about helping people who are stuck in 
houses that are about to be foreclosed on and help to relieve those 
foreclosures. There may be a way for us to encourage servicers for all 
of these mortgages out across the country to modify the loans as some 
banks are now doing. By modifying the loan, they simply say to you: 
What can you afford to pay? As long as you can pay that and pay the 
interest on a regular basis, we will change the loan to fit you. That 
way there is no foreclosure. The loan does not go bad. The houses on 
that same street do not go down in value because your house is 
foreclosed on. We suggest we should spend the next week talking about 
reorienting the money that we seek to spend to stimulate the economy on 
housing first.
  Second, we suggest the next component of a stimulus package should be 
tax relief that would help create jobs now. My own view is that 
temporary tax relief is nice. I like having the money in my pocket, but 
it does not stimulate very much. Permanent tax relief, the economists 
tell us--money you can depend on for the future--builds confidence and 
stimulates the economy.
  For example, the small business expensing provision, which would spur 
investments by doubling the amount that small business owners can 
immediately write off on their taxes for capital investments and for 
purchases of new equipment in 2009. Another example is the bonus 
depreciation provision, that would be helpful. Middle-class tax 
relief--this is the permanent tax relief I was talking about--by 
lowering the 15-percent bracket to 10 percent and the 10-percent 
bracket to 5 percent. Those are examples of permanent tax relief or 
business tax relief that could help create jobs now.
  Third, we should not spend this kind of money on many of these 
programs. We should not borrow this money when each family already owes 
over a half a million dollars. We should not borrow the money to spend 
on programs we do not have to have. That is not a wise use of our 
dollars. We ought to take all of that out of this stimulus bill.
  For example, there are small examples: buying new cars, money for 
contraceptives, rehabilitating off-road trails, honey bee insurance. We 
can find items like that which don't create jobs now. But the fact is, 
I am more concerned about the $190 billion of entitlement spending, the 
automatic spending that is in this $1.2 trillion. Every estimate is 
that $130 billion, $140 billion, $150 billion of that will never get 
out of the budget. The House put in almost $100 billion of new Medicaid 
spending for the States.
  Well, Governors and legislators are going to like that except we are 
never going to be able to reform the Medicaid Program. The Federal 
contribution to it is so rich that States cannot afford to take a fresh 
look at it. What is Tennessee going to do after it gets $2 billion--$1 
billion a year--for the Medicaid Program for the next 2 years and, 
then, in the third year, gets zero of that money? That sort of money 
ought not to be in a so-called stimulus package.
  We need some truth in packaging. If it stimulates--and all of us can 
think of things that do--then put it in; if it does not, keep it out. 
Historic preservation fund grants, I love those, but they are not going 
to stimulate jobs in the next few months. Head Start, I was the 
principal sponsor of that. Pell grants, I was a college president. Next 
week, after the stimulus, we will be talking about how much we can 
afford in our budget to increase those. Federal spending for Pell 
grants has doubled in the last 6 years, but those things do not belong 
in a stimulus budget.
  Some things do. There are highways that can be built. There are Corps 
of Engineers projects that can be completed. There are National Park 
Service infrastructure projects that can be worked on next month. These 
are important improvement programs. That would help stimulate as well. 
We should be able to make an intelligent distinction between those 
things that can actually stimulate and those things that are just good-
sounding things that we might vote for if we had the money and if we 
did not have to borrow so much of it. That is our third suggestion 
about what we should do.
  One other suggestion--here is an area where we actually have 
potential, I believe, for bipartisan support. We should do something, 
when we debate the stimulus package, about automatic spending, 
entitlement spending, and by that we mean Social Security, Medicare, 
and Medicaid.
  As I mentioned earlier, by the year 2015--not so far away--that will 
be 70 percent of our budget. In other words, when we come here, we get 
to vote to appropriate 30 percent of the taxpayer dollars we spend 
because 70 percent is automatically spent on those entitlement 
programs. That is forcing our debt up to 100 percent of gross domestic 
product.
  We had a breakfast on Tuesday here, the bipartisan breakfast we have 
on Tuesday mornings. It is a chance for us to get together across party 
lines. It was evenly divided, actually. There were 24 Members who came. 
The whole

[[Page 2096]]

subject was the Senator Conrad-Senator Gregg proposal to create a 
commission that would come up with a way to deal with Social Security, 
Medicare, and Medicaid, and present it to us. We would vote it up or 
down, and some way we would be forced to deal with this entitlement 
growth problem.
  Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, said in a speech a week ago 
today that he was ready to deal with the entitlement programs, but he 
was disappointed it was not dealt with in the last 2 years. He pledged 
to President Obama he would give him more support on dealing with it 
than the Democrats gave to President Bush during the last few years. 
You will remember President Bush tried in the beginning of his second 
term to deal with Social Security. He wanted private accounts. The 
Democrats said no to private accounts. So they just went down their 
parallel tracks and never got anywhere. Somehow they never got together 
and said: Well, let's drop private accounts, or let's try to do this; 
we can't do that.
  President Obama has made clear he is serious about this. Senator 
McConnell has made clear we are serious about it. We have a Conrad-
Gregg proposal. We had 24 Senators meeting last Tuesday. We are meeting 
again next Tuesday. We believe something ought to be in this stimulus 
package that at least begins the process of dealing with entitlements 
in the long term so we can say to the American people: Yes, we are 
going to borrow some amount of money--maybe hundreds of billions of 
dollars--to stimulate the economy, and we know it contributes to the 
debt, but we are at least taking a step toward dealing with the long-
term excessive debt we are experiencing in our country.
  Finally, after listening to the Budget Committee hearings this week, 
the conclusion I came to was that I wish we were doing it all now. Here 
is what I mean by that. I spoke a little earlier about all the things 
we have tried to do since October at the Washington level--some by 
Congress, some by the Federal Reserve, and some by the Federal Deposit 
Insurance Corporation--to restart the economy. Whether it was dealing 
with the banks or the auto companies or troubled assets, there has been 
a lot of effort here.
  After listening to the testimony in the Budget Committee, it seems 
perfectly obvious that we are going to have to do more. We are going to 
have to do more in housing. We would like to suggest we at least start 
addressing housing in this stimulus package, but if we don't do it 
here, President Obama and his team are going to have to recommend some 
steps for us to take in housing because that is how you restart the 
economy.
  Everyone who looks at the Nation's banks and financial institutions 
knows we are going to have to do something there. We passed a bill in 
October called the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, providing 
money to Treasury to address troubled assets. We thought it was going 
to be used to go get those bad assets off of the bank balance sheets so 
they could get back in good shape and lend again. That is what happens 
when banks fail or get in trouble. In normal times, the FDIC swoops in 
and takes the troubled assets out, sells them to another bank, and it 
closes on Friday and opens on Monday. Depositors are protected, and 
sometimes stockholders lose, but we go on and barely notice it. 
However, that is not what the money we passed was used for. It was 
used, basically, to give money to banks to capitalize, and the reason, 
apparently, was they were in such bad shape, they had to have it. So 
maybe it wasn't a bad thing to do, but it wasn't what we thought was 
going to be done, and now we still have the problem of bad assets.
  We asked the witnesses: How many troubled assets do we have in all of 
these banks? They said $1 trillion or $2 trillion. I am not talking 
about a stimulus package; I am talking about troubled assets in 
financial institutions in the United States. We said: Well, then, what 
are we supposed to do about that? They suggested that the ideas we are 
likely to hear--they did not represent the administration, but the 
administration is listening to many of the same people--was that they 
may recommend, for example, some entity that will actually take the 
troubled assets out of the banks at some price, and then the banks are 
free to go ahead and with confidence start lending again. And we can 
start borrowing again, the economy goes again, but then we still have 
this entity over here. If it is going to buy $1 trillion or $2 trillion 
worth of bad assets, where does it get the money? Some of it is going 
to come from the taxpayers. How much of it? One witness said as much as 
we can afford to put in. So maybe $500 billion, $600 billion, $700 
billion, $800 billion more dollars, not to spend as the stimulus 
package does but to invest in assets that we hope to sell for at least 
as much as we paid for them. That could happen. We might lose some 
money, we might make some money, but we are not spending it. But it is 
a lot of money, and it is taxpayers dollars, and there will be a lot of 
concern in Virginia and in Tennessee and in every State when we have to 
do that on top of what we have done before--on top of this stimulus. So 
why aren't we considering that today? Why aren't we considering that 
bad bank or what we are going to have to do about troubled assets?
  So I think a better way to do it would be to say: Let's bring in the 
amount of money for troubled assets--is it $500 billion?--let's bring 
in the money to reorient toward housing, $200 billion or $300 billion, 
and then let's see what projects really do stimulate. Let's do it all 
together, and then let's see how much money we are talking about so 
that we are not surprised and the people we represent are not 
surprised. I would like to see us do it all at once.
  So next week in the Senate is a very important week. There is a good 
deal of talk about bipartisanship. We appreciate President Obama's 
efforts on that. In my view, he and his team have been genuine in their 
outreach to Republicans. Just because we don't agree with their ideas 
doesn't mean there is not a bipartisan spirit here. And as time goes 
on, maybe we will get into a situation where even though the Democrats 
have enough votes to pass most bills and we have enough votes to stop 
cold some bills and to slow down any bill, that is not the way we work. 
If we come up with a better idea, maybe the majority will adopt it and 
create a bill that builds confidence in the country.
  President Bush technically didn't need Congress's approval, except on 
appropriations, to wage the war in Iraq. Some of us thought it would be 
better if he had it, though, so Senator Salazar and I, along with 17 
Senators and about 60 House Members across party lines, suggested that 
we adopt a resolution approving the principles of the Iraq Study Group 
as a way to conclude the war in Iraq honorably. President Bush didn't 
like that, and Majority Leader Reid wouldn't bring it up for a vote. We 
might have been the only group that unified Senator Reid and President 
Bush on the Iraq war, but we couldn't get it done.
  I think it is a shame we couldn't because Secretary Rice and 
Secretary Gates told me not long ago they thought where we were going 
to end up in Iraq under Secretary Gates' administration is about where 
the Iraq Study Group said we should. If we had adopted that as a 
Congress, perhaps the war would have been easier, and our enemies would 
have gotten a clearer message, and our troops would have gotten more 
support, and President Bush would have had a more successful 
Presidency.
  So we won the election, and we passed the bill. That is the recipe 
for passing many bills, but it is not the recipe for a successful 
Presidency. I think President Obama knows that, and that is why he has 
gone out of his way to visit with us and talk with us. I hope--with the 
stimulus package, with entitlements coming down the road and health 
care plans coming down the road--that the ideas we have on this side of 
the aisle, if they are good, are adopted on the other side of the aisle 
and we genuinely can work together in a legislative way. I think that 
can happen, and I would like for it to happen starting next week.

[[Page 2097]]

  Next week is important for the Senate and important for the American 
people. We on the Republican side of the aisle believe we need a 
stimulus package, but we believe it needs to be the right stimulus 
package.
  First, it should fix the problem, and the problem is housing. That 
would help restart the economy. And we have specific ideas about how to 
do that which I have suggested.
  Second, we should let people keep more of their own money. That means 
permanent tax cuts. That is a way to build confidence.
  Third, because we are borrowing this extraordinary amount of money 
and because we have other requirements for borrowed dollars, we should 
be very careful about what we borrow and what we spend it for and only 
spend it for those items that genuinely stimulate the economy and 
create jobs in the very near term. That is the truth in packaging.
  If we adopt those three principles, then I think there will be 
genuine bipartisan support next week for a stimulus. If we don't, there 
won't be. That is why we have the Senate. That is why we have the 
debate. That is why I think we are here.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
following my remarks an article by R. Glenn Hubbard and Christopher J. 
Mayer detailing the proposal for a 4.5-percent mortgage loan over 30 
years.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (See exhibit 2.)
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed 
in the Record as well an article from the Wall Street Journal this week 
called ``A 40-Year Wish List'' as an example of the kinds of items that 
are in the stimulus bill that ought not to be if we are careful about 
the money we are borrowing to spend.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  (See exhibit 3.)

                               Exhibit 1

                     [From USA Today, May 19, 2008]

                   Taxpayers' Bill Leaps by Trillions

                          (By Dennis Cauchon)

       The federal government's long-term financial obligations 
     grew by $2.5 trillion last year, a reflection of the 
     mushrooming cost of Medicare and Social Security benefits as 
     more baby boomers reach retirement.
       That's double the red ink of a year earlier.
       Taxpayers are on the hook for a record $57.3 trillion in 
     federal liabilities to cover the lifetime benefits of 
     everyone eligible for Medicare, Social Security and other 
     government programs, a USA TODAY analysis found. That's 
     nearly $500,000 per household.
       When obligations of state and local governments are added, 
     the total rises to $61.7 trillion, or $531,472 per household. 
     That is more than four times what Americans owe in personal 
     debt such as mortgages.
       The $2.5 trillion in federal liabilities dwarfs the $162 
     billion the government officially announced as last year's 
     deficit, down from $248 billion a year earlier.
       ``We're running deficits in the trillions of dollars, not 
     the hundreds of billions of dollars we're being told,'' says 
     Sheila Weinberg, chief executive of the Institute for Truth 
     in Accounting of Chicago.
       The reason for the discrepancy: Accounting standards 
     require corporations and state governments to count new 
     financial obligations, even if the payments will be made 
     later. The federal government doesn't follow that rule. 
     Instead of counting lifetime benefits for programs such as 
     Social Security, the government counts the cost of benefits 
     for the current year.
       The deteriorating condition of these programs doesn't show 
     up in the government's bottom line, but the information is 
     released elsewhere--in Medicare's annual report, for example. 
     Since 2004, USA TODAY has collected the information to 
     provide taxpayers with a financial report similar to what a 
     corporation would give shareholders. Big new liabilities 
     taken on in 2007:
       Medicare: $1.2 trillion.
       Social Security: $900 billion.
       Civil servant retirement: $106 billion.
       Veteran benefits: $34 billion.
       The multitrillion-dollar loss is a more meaningful 
     financial number than the official deficit, says Tom Allen, 
     chairman of the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board, 
     which helps set federal accounting rules.
       Medicare has an unfunded liability of $30.4 trillion.
       That means, in addition to paying all future Medicare 
     taxes, the government needs $30.4 trillion set aside in an 
     interest-earning account to pay benefits promised to existing 
     taxpayers and beneficiaries. The amount is sure to rise when 
     the oldest of 79 million baby boomers--62 this year--reach 65 
     and become eligible.
       Economist Dean Baker says the huge liabilities are 
     potentially misleading because future generations will have 
     greater income. ``If we fix health care, then our deficits 
     can be easily dealt with,'' he says.
                                  ____


                               Exhibit 2

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Dec. 17, 2008]

Low-Interest Mortgages Are the Answer--Stop the Decline in Home Prices, 
                            Stop the Crisis

             (By R. Glenn Hubbard and Christopher J. Mayer)

       Recent news articles suggest that the Treasury Department 
     is considering a plan to offer a 4.5% mortgage for home 
     buyers for a period of time. Let's hope it does. It would 
     help arrest the decline in house prices that is at the base 
     of the ongoing financial crisis and recession.
       Raising the demand for housing makes sense now. While 
     fundamental factors clearly played a role in driving down 
     house prices that were at excessive levels two years ago, we 
     have argued in a paper (to be published in the Berkeley 
     Electronic Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy) that in 
     most markets house values are today lower than what is 
     consistent with the average level of affordability in the 
     past 20 years.
       Nonetheless, without policy action house prices are likely 
     to continue falling, thanks largely to the meltdown in 
     mortgage markets and the weakening employment outlook. 
     Conversely, we see little risk that increasing the demand for 
     housing will touch off another housing bubble. And indexing 
     the mortgage rate to the Treasury yield could avoid this 
     outcome in the future. While the economy is contracting, low 
     interest rates would spur housing activity. When economic 
     activity improves, the U.S. Treasury yield and mortgage rates 
     would rise.
       A 4.5% mortgage rate is not too low. The 10-year U.S. 
     Treasury yield closed at 2.3% on Dec. 12, 2008. Hence a 4.5% 
     mortgage rate is 2.2% above the Treasury yield, above the 
     1.6% spread that would prevail in a normally functioning 
     mortgage market.
       Some have argued that lenders should earn more than the 
     average 1.6% spread, to compensate for the fact that housing 
     is a much riskier investment today. We don't think so. Recall 
     that a mortgage can be thought of as a risk-free bond plus 
     two possibilities that increase risk to lenders: default and/
     or prepayment. Historically, the risk of default adds about 
     0.25% to the interest rate. The remaining spread of the 
     mortgage rate over the Treasury yield represents the risk of 
     prepayment and underwriting costs. With falling house prices, 
     the risk of default could indeed add 0.75% or more for a 
     newly underwritten and fully documented loan. But 4.5% would 
     be the lowest mortgage rate in more than 3o years--so the 
     additional risk to lenders of prepayment would be almost nil. 
     And low mortgage rates would substantially reduce the risk of 
     further house price declines.
       Moreover, a 4.5% mortgage rate will raise housing demand 
     significantly. A simple forecast can be obtained by applying 
     the 2003-2004 homeownership rates to 2007 households. We use 
     the 2003-2004 home ownership rates because those were the 
     years of the lowest previous mortgage rates (the average 
     mortgage rate was 5.8%).
       An increase in the homeownership rate from 67.9 (third 
     quarter, 2008) to 68.6 (the average rate from 2003-2004) 
     would increase homeownership by about 800,000 new homeowners. 
     If we also take into account the changing relative age 
     distribution of the population, there would be a total of 1.6 
     million new homeowners. A simple statistical analysis 
     examining the impact of lower mortgage rates and higher 
     unemployment rates yields an even higher, and firmer, 
     estimate of 2.4 million additional owner occupied homes in 
     2009.
       The increased demand for housing arising from lower 
     mortgage rates would provide a floor on further house price 
     declines. Estimates in our recent paper suggest that real 
     house prices increase by about 75% of the decline in after-
     tax mortgage payments. So a decline in mortgage payments of 
     16% would result in approximately a 12% floor on the decline 
     in house prices.
       Current futures markets suggest that house prices will 
     decline by 12%-18% in the next 18 months. So a 4.5% interest 
     rate might well lead to flat or even slightly higher house 
     prices in 2009.
       Stabilizing house prices will likely improve consumer 
     confidence substantially. Increases in house prices relative 
     to where they would have gone with higher mortgage rates 
     would also provide a housing wealth effect--that is, higher 
     annual increases in spending as consumers feel richer--on 
     consumption of as much as $76 billion to $113 billion each 
     year.
       The 4.5% mortgage rate that the Treasury is considering 
     also should be available for present homeowners who want to 
     refinance, because of the benefits for the economy as a 
     whole. We calculate that up to 34 million

[[Page 2098]]

     households would be able to do so, at an average monthly 
     savings of $428--or a total reduction in mortgage payments of 
     $174 billion. This is a permanent reduction in payments and 
     is thus likely to spur appreciable increases in consumption.
       Moreover, trillions of dollars of refinancings would retire 
     a large number of the existing mortgage-backed securities. 
     This would reduce uncertainty about the value of existing 
     mortgage-backed securities. It would flood the market with 
     additional liquidity that the private sector could deploy to 
     other uses such as auto loans, credit cards, commercial 
     mortgages and general business lending.
       A reduction of mortgage interest rates to 4.5% (or, given 
     yesterday's Fed action, to a lower level) is superior to 
     other proposals that focus only on stopping foreclosures, or 
     on reforming the bankruptcy code to keep people in their 
     homes. Stopping foreclosures, however meritorious, may not 
     limit the dangerous decline in house prices as much as 
     proponents claim. It could work the other way. Stripping down 
     mortgage balances in bankruptcy would likely raise future 
     mortgage interest rates and lower the availability of 
     mortgages, reducing house prices.
       Finally, a decrease in the mortgage rate, even though it is 
     intended be a temporary intervention in the present exigency, 
     plants a seed for future thought. Given the chaos of the 
     recent past, wouldn't a return to simple, 30-year fixed-rate 
     mortgages with a low rate be the right foundation for the 
     long-term future?
                                  ____


                               Exhibit 3

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 28, 2009]

                          A 40-Year Wish List

       ``Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by 
     that is it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do 
     before.''
       So said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in 
     November, and Democrats in Congress are certainly taking his 
     advice to heart. The 647-page, $825 billion House legislation 
     is being sold as an economic ``stimulus,'' but now that 
     Democrats have finally released the details we understand 
     Rahm's point much better. This is a political wonder that 
     manages to spend money on just about every pent-up Democratic 
     proposal of the last 40 years.
       We've looked it over, and even we can't quite believe it. 
     There's $1 billion for Amtrak, the federal railroad that 
     hasn't turned a profit in 40 years; $2 billion for child-care 
     subsidies; $50 million for that great engine of job creation, 
     the National Endowment for the Arts; $400 million for global-
     warming research and another $2.4 billion for carbon-capture 
     demonstration projects. There's even $650 million on top of 
     the billions already doled out to pay for digital TV 
     conversion coupons.
       In selling the plan, President Obama has said this bill 
     will make ``dramatic investments to revive our flagging 
     economy.'' Well, you be the judge. Some $30 billion, or less 
     than 5% of the spending in the bill, is for fixing bridges or 
     other highway projects. There's another $40 billion for 
     broadband and electric grid development, airports and clean 
     water projects that are arguably worthwhile priorities.
       Add the roughly $20 billion for business tax cuts, and by 
     our estimate only $90 billion out of $825 billion, or about 
     12 cents of every $1, is for something that can plausibly be 
     considered a growth stimulus. And even many of these projects 
     aren't likely to help the economy immediately. As Peter 
     Orszag, the President's new budget director, told Congress a 
     year ago, ``even those [public works] that are `on the shelf' 
     generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide 
     timely stimulus to the economy.''
       Most of the rest of this project spending will go to such 
     things as renewable energy funding ($8 billion) or mass 
     transit ($6 billion) that have a low or negative return on 
     investment. Most urban transit systems are so badly managed 
     that their fares cover less than half of their costs. 
     However, the people who operate these systems belong to 
     public-employee unions that are campaign contributors to . . 
     . guess which party?
       Here's another lu-lu: Congress wants to spend $600 million 
     more for the federal government to buy new cars. Uncle Sam 
     already spends $3 billion a year on its fleet of 600,000 
     vehicles. Congress also wants to spend $7 billion for 
     modernizing federal buildings and facilities. The Smithsonian 
     is targeted to receive $150 million; we love the Smithsonian, 
     too, but this is a job creator?
       Another ``stimulus'' secret is that some $252 billion is 
     for income-transfer payments--that is, not investments that 
     arguably help everyone, but cash or benefits to individuals 
     for doing nothing at all. There's $81 billion for Medicaid, 
     $36 billion for expanded unemployment benefits, $20 billion 
     for food stamps, and $83 billion for the earned income credit 
     for people who don't pay income tax. While some of that may 
     be justified to help poorer Americans ride out the recession, 
     they aren't job creators.
       As for the promise of accountability, some $54 billion will 
     go to federal programs that the Office of Management and 
     Budget or the Government Accountability Office have already 
     criticized as ``ineffective'' or unable to pass basic 
     financial audits. These include the Economic Development 
     Administration, the Small Business Administration, the 10 
     federal job training programs, and many more.
       Oh, and don't forget education, which would get $66 billion 
     more. That's more than the entire Education Department spent 
     a mere 10 years ago and is on top of the doubling under 
     President Bush. Some $6 billion of this will subsidize 
     university building projects. If you think the intention here 
     is to help kids learn, the House declares on page 257 that 
     ``No recipient . . . shall use such funds to provide 
     financial assistance to students to attend private elementary 
     or secondary schools.'' Horrors: Some money might go to 
     nonunion teachers.
       The larger fiscal issue here is whether this spending 
     bonanza will become part of the annual ``budget baseline'' 
     that Congress uses as the new floor when calculating how much 
     to increase spending the following year, and into the future. 
     Democrats insist that it will not. But it's hard--no, 
     impossible--to believe that Congress will cut spending next 
     year on any of these programs from their new, higher levels. 
     The likelihood is that this allegedly emergency spending will 
     become a permanent addition to federal outlays--increasing 
     pressure for tax increases in the bargain. Any Blue Dog 
     Democrat who votes for this ought to turn in his ``deficit 
     hawk'' credentials.
       This is supposed to be a new era of bipartisanship, but 
     this bill was written based on the wish list of every 
     living--or dead--Democratic interest group. As Speaker Nancy 
     Pelosi put it, ``We won the election. We wrote the bill.'' So 
     they did. Republicans should let them take all of the credit.

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I note the 
absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. President, there is a growing recognition in the 
Congress that the so-called spending stimulus bill is colossal in 
nature, and it is going to be moved through the Congress with little or 
no significant changes. Those of us who have been around a while can 
see what is happening. The bill moved through committee. A lot of good 
amendments and suggestions for change were made in the Appropriations 
Committee, but none passed. A lot of ideas and suggestions were made in 
the Finance Committee, and none were agreed to, at least none of any 
significance. There are provisions in the bill I would strongly support 
and believe should be part of a stimulus package because I think a 
targeted, smart bill can help improve our economy, but it is not going 
to change the difficulties we are in, I am convinced of that.
  Christina Romer, President Obama's top economist, has predicted that 
if we pass a stimulus bill, the unemployment rate will not reach quite 
so high. Her numbers were referred to in the Budget Committee, of which 
the Presiding Officer, Senator Warner, is a member. Those numbers were 
brought out, but even without any stimulus, she projected the 
unemployment rate would not reach 10 percent.
  During the tough recession when President Reagan broke the 
inflationary spiral we were in, we hit almost 11 percent unemployment. 
The Congressional Budget Office also projected that with no stimulus, 
the unemployment rate would not reach 10 percent. When asked if the 
stimulus package would make it any better, Mr. Sunshine, the Acting 
Director of the Budget Office at that time, said it might.
  I think a stimulus package can help but I do not think a stimulus 
package is going to change the fundamentals of this tremendous economy, 
which is going through a period of rebalancing and adjustment that is 
painful. It is not going to be bought away by throwing a few billion 
dollars or maybe even a trillion dollars at it.
  I wish to make that point in general. We are in a tough time. We are 
going to go through a tough time. It is not going to be easy, but this 
country has gone through tough times before. We can hope and pray it 
will not be as tough as the tough recession we had in the early to mid-
1980s. We survived that. We developed some economic principles that 
ended inflation, and we

[[Page 2099]]

had 25 years of steady progress based on a sound dollar and sound 
economy. I guess I would say let's be a bit humble in what we think we 
can accomplish.
  I will add one more point. Politically, Presidents and Congress like 
to do something. When there is difficulty out there and the TV every 
night is coming with some bad news stories and our constituents are 
worried, elected officials feel like they must do something; if we 
don't do something, our constituents will get mad at us and vote us out 
of office. But what if the right thing to do is to not overreact? What 
if the right thing for America is to ask ourselves what it is that can 
actually be of benefit, and let's do that. But let's not go hog-wild, 
let's not do some things that are going to do long-term damage to the 
country. That is where we are. Good people can disagree on where that 
line is drawn. A lot of people are talking about politics--Republicans 
did not get this amendment or that amendment. I am beyond discussing 
those issues at this point. My view is: Is the stimulus bill that is 
going to be moved in this Senate, which is even bigger than the one in 
the House--it was $818 billion, I believe, in the House legislation, 
and this one is already now at $888 billion. They added $70 billion for 
the AMT tax fix. So it is now almost $900 billion.
  I am not sure how much thought we have given to it. We certainly have 
not had extensive hearings on this legislation. That is where we are 
strategically.
  Let me say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, the more 
people look at this so-called stimulus bill, really a spending bill, 
the more disastrous and the more flawed they are finding it to be. Most 
Members of Congress, most Members of the Senate, I think, want to 
support a stimulus bill. They probably have made public statements that 
they want to support a stimulus bill. But all of a sudden, people are 
saying: Whoa, really? Is that much in it? This is in it? Only 3 percent 
of the money goes to roads? Really? I thought it was a roads bill. We 
are hearing that kind of talk. People are beginning to ask questions 
about what is in the legislation that can spend $900 billion.
  It doesn't just cost $900 billion. The Congressional Budget Office 
has looked at it, as they are supposed to do. They are a nonpartisan 
office. They give us good information on how much legislation costs, 
among other things.
  Remember, every dime of spending, all of this $900 billion increases 
the debt. We are already in debt. Any other dollar that is spent 
increases the debt. So the $900 billion spending bill will increase the 
debt in 10 years by $900 billion, and you have to ask yourself: Where 
do we get that money? We have to borrow the money. And to borrow the 
money, we have to pay interest on it. The Congressional Budget Office 
has calculated it. They didn't at first, but now they have. They 
calculate $347 billion over the next 10 years, the budget period we are 
looking at, will be expended by the American taxpayers to pay interest 
on this debt. By the way, the deficit this year is the largest one in 
the history of the Republic.
  I will talk about the debt a little bit more because it is important. 
There is no free lunch. Julie Andrews in ``The Sound of Music'' said 
nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could. Debts will be repaid. 
You think: Well, we may not repay these debts. We will have to, and we 
will pay interest on it. We may succumb to the very pernicious 
temptation to inflate the currency and pay back our debt with dollars 
less valuable than the ones we borrow today. That is what we call 
debasing the currency. That is inflation. That is a corrosive situation 
the country must not get into and has not been in for the last 25 
years. Those are the temptations we can fall into when the debt gets 
too great.
  The argument is we want to have shovel-ready projects, and those 
shovel-ready projects will increase employment and will help us work 
our way through this recession. It is going to be longer than most 
recessions. It is going to end, but it will be longer than most 
recessions.
  The message that has gone out is infrastructure is behind. Roads and 
bridges are not up-to-date. We need to spend money on them. Now would 
be a good time to go into debt and borrow money and fix roads and 
bridges and that we would, therefore, be able to create jobs and have 
something concrete after it is all over.
  I like building bridges because it is a concrete thing, and when it 
is over, people can benefit from it for generations to come. Unlike a 
lot of the Government programs that are in this bill, we spend billions 
and billions of dollars, and when it is over, we ask ourselves: Did it 
do any good at all?
  As I indicated, we now know the request for roads and bridges in the 
$900 billion stimulus bill amounts to around $30 billion--$15 billion 
the first year, $15 billion the second. There is other infrastructure 
spending--on hospitals, school money, those kinds of things.
  The idea that this is a roads and bridge bill is false. It is false. 
It is not so.
  In addition to that point, I note the Congressional Budget Office 
examined the legislation to ask whether this spending we would be 
participating in would actually come forward quickly, as everybody says 
it must, to create jobs now and, therefore, help us ease the rising 
unemployment we are seeing.
  CBO has found that only around 50 percent of the spending that is in 
the legislation will occur in the first 2 years.
  What about this year, the first year? But even over 2 years, only 50 
percent of it is spent. The other 50 percent is going to be spent after 
2 years, in years 3, 4, 5. According to Ms. Romer, the President's top 
adviser on the economy, we will be coming out of the recession by then 
anyway without a stimulus package.
  The programs, in addition to the construction projects and spending 
plans that are put together, have been poorly cobbled together in 
haste. They have not been well thought out. There is no way they could 
have been well thought out.
  Three hundred economists, including three Nobel laureates, have 
signed a petition condemning the stimulus plan as it is now written. 
Many of them would favor a stimulus plan, but when they look at this 
one, they are aghast, and they are warning us that infrastructure 
spending has never successfully lifted a country out of an economic 
slowdown. There are many examples of that around the world. These 
economists are saying that.
  Marty Feldstein, an economist President Reagan admired and 
conservatives have admired and most Americans have admired, said at one 
point he favored a stimulus bill. I think about $350 billion. He has 
now written an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal saying this is bad; do 
not pass this stimulus bill. He opposes it.
  The Chamber of Commerce--I like the Chamber of Commerce. They are 
great folks. But if anybody thinks they are not self-interested does 
not know what they do. They have a lot of Members who are going to 
benefit from this program. They are going to get bucks out of it. They 
favored a stimulus package sometime ago, and they said we need a 
stimulus package. Now they are saying they are not for this bill. They 
are opposing it, even though their members, a lot of them, are going to 
get bucks out of it. Because we are throwing a lot of bucks out there, 
and they are going to get some. Even they, in the interest of their 
country and the long-term vision for the economy, have concluded it is 
not good for this country to pass the bill we are dealing with now.
  The bottom line is that I am convinced now that the extreme long-term 
cost of this legislation outweighs any short-term benefits. And 
remember, the $1.2 trillion, the $900 billion plus the interest on it 
that CBO has calculated--and it is only right that they do so--comes on 
top of a $700 billion bank/Wall Street bailout that proved ineffectual, 
has not been successful. We are being told now--and President Obama met 
with the Republicans in a very nice discussion, and the President 
acknowledged that they are going to have to be coming back and asking 
for more Wall Street money not that many weeks from now. So we are not 
through

[[Page 2100]]

yet with throwing taxpayers' money into this vortex.
  The surge in debt and reckless spending that we have seen in the last 
year, from both parties, is unlike anything this Nation has ever seen 
in its history, yet there has been such little serious discussion about 
where the money is going, how we are going to account for it, and 
whether we will receive a legitimate benefit from it. It is amazing to 
me. So I think we have to reconsider the size and the nature of this 
legislation. We cannot do this. It is bad for America. It is not a 
question of Republicans and Democrats and that kind of thing. I know 
the conventional wisdom is we have to do something; if we don't do 
something, people will be mad at us; if we don't do something and the 
economy gets worse, they will say: You didn't do anything, you stupid 
goof. You sat on the sideline and didn't do anything. But I have to 
say, at some point you can do too much and you can do things that are 
unwise, and that is what we are paid to decide here.
  So I am committed, and I will do what I can, to defeat the bill as 
written. I will support a more targeted, cost-effective, temporary plan 
that can help our economy, but it must be done at a price we can 
afford.
  I am going to talk in a minute about the size of the deficit we are 
facing. As a member of the Budget Committee, I know it is a grim 
discussion. I have concluded that this is a fight for the very 
financial soul of our country. I mean, what is it we are doing here? 
Are we fulfilling our responsibilities to watch over the taxpayers' 
money? Presidents can't spend money if we don't appropriate it. Every 
dime President Bush spent on the Wall Street bailout, we gave to him. 
Every dime President Bush spent on sending out those checks last spring 
that were supposed to stop the recession went to the debt. It increased 
our debt, causing us last year to have the biggest deficit in the 
history of the Republic. It didn't work, but we gave the money. It is 
not President Bush who did it; we funded it. And no stimulus spending 
bill is going to get passed and no money is going to be available to be 
spent unless Congress spends it. It is our responsibility. We can't 
pass it off on President Obama.
  Let me show this chart. As a member of the Budget Committee who has 
dealt with these issues for a number of years, this chart is where my 
mind is, if you want to know the truth. In 2004, after that recession, 
when President Bush cut taxes and did some other things--I think he 
even sent out some stimulus checks in that period of time--the deficit 
that year amounted to $413 billion. That is how much we spent that year 
more than we took in, in 2004. It was the largest number we had ever 
seen. And he was pummeled by the loyal opposition, my Democratic 
colleagues, for wasteful spending and for putting us in deficit and 
that kind of thing, and some of that was justified, in my view.
  In 2005, the deficit dropped about $100 billion. It dropped to $318 
billion. In 2006, it dropped to $248 billion. In 2007, a year and a 
half ago, it was $161 billion. We were heading in the right direction. 
I began to feel better about the country. Last spring, we sent out $160 
billion in checks to try to stop this economic slowdown, and that 
virtually doubled the deficit. We came in, September 30 of last year, 
when the fiscal year ended, the deficit was $455 billion--the largest, 
I think, ever, but certainly the largest since World War II--and we 
didn't hear much talk about that. The Congressional Budget Office is 
our expert office on this, and we now see that they have estimated that 
without the stimulus package, without the stimulus bill, the deficit 
this year will be $1.2 trillion, more than twice the highest deficit in 
the history of the Republic. To give you some idea of how much money we 
are talking about, imagine all the income tax payments that come to our 
country from individuals. That amounts to $1.1 trillion. Right here, 
without the stimulus, we are at $1.2 trillion, equal to the entire 
revenue from the income tax in America. With the stimulus package, CBO 
estimates it will be just over $2 trillion, and that does not include 
the interest that will be accumulated on it.
  That $1.2 trillion deficit that they are projecting now includes 
$200-plus billion for the Wall Street bailout, and they are also 
including about $240 billion for the Freddie and Fannie financial 
bailout, those huge institutions that bought up these bad mortgages and 
then we bailed them out. That is what helps drive the number. Next 
year, they are projecting $703 billion and then $498 billion--all of 
those bigger than any in previous history, and we will be seeing some 
additional expenditures there.
  For example, this $703 billion does not include the alternative 
minimum tax fix, which costs $70 billion a year. I think most of my 
colleagues probably know this, but I see some new Members of the Senate 
here, so to tell you all how we gimmick the system, the alternative 
minimum tax is $70 billion a year to fix it. Everybody knows we are not 
going to allow it to kick in and hit the American economy at the full 
amount. So why don't we go on and fix it permanently and set a rate? 
Because CBO will score it. And if we score it for $70 billion a year, 
for a 10-year budget, that is $700 billion. So we pass a law that fixes 
it for 1 year, and the next year, when they calculate the debt, they 
assume we are going to have $70 billion more in revenue from the 
alternative revenue tax. But we are not going to have that money 
because we are going to fix it again. There are a lot of gimmicks in 
here, so those numbers are going to be a lot higher. I know this. I 
have been here, and I know how the system works.
  Finally, I will add one more thing to the discussion, and that is the 
interest on the debt. We are now a little under $200 billion a year in 
paying interest on the debt. The debt has been growing. I think it is 
about $10 trillion. In the next 10 years, the estimates are it could be 
$21 trillion in debt--the total debt of America. This bill, by the way, 
raises the debt limit. It has to, because we are adding another 
trillion dollars in debt. The Congressional Budget Office scores that 
in 2014--5 years from now--the interest on the debt will not be $200 
billion, but counting the stimulus package it will be around $430 
billion.
  Now, how much money is that--$430 billion? Today, it is $200 billion, 
and 5 years from now it will be $430 billion. Big deal. But that is 
every year, No. 1. It is every year. And to give some perspective on 
how large that is, it is more than a third of the income tax revenue of 
the entire U.S. Government from individuals, and it is a number that is 
almost equal to the 5-year cost of the Iraq war. We have spent about 
$500 billion on the Iraq war in the 5 years that has occurred. That has 
been a major expense of the U.S. Government, and it has been very 
painful to us. People have been not happy about it. But by surging this 
debt, we will in the future be incurring an interest payment almost 
equal every year to the 5-year cost of the Iraq war.
  So I say to my colleagues, I know the momentum has been going 
forward. I know the House moved forward with the bill and people have 
expected that we are going to pass it, but I am not sure. I think the 
American people are getting concerned about this, and they are saying, 
let's pare this down. Why can't we do a $200 billion or a $300 billion 
dollar stimulus package that will actually create jobs and won't add so 
much money to our deficit and will create things that are of permanent 
value to the public, not providing relief to soldiers who fought with 
us in world wars and other programs that are in the legislation.
  This is the beginning of a discussion, or it ought to be the 
beginning of a national discussion about what this country is about. We 
need to ask ourselves: Isn't it important that we have a sound 
currency? Shouldn't a sound dollar be one of the highest possible goals 
of the Congress? And to have that, aren't we, as a Congress, going to 
have to be responsible enough to, in times of uncertainty and fear, be 
able to rationally think through this and do this right?
  My 90-year-old aunt, who I was with last week in Alabama, said to me: 
You all don't know what you are doing up there, do you? And I don't 
think we do. I think that was as good a synopsis of what the American 
people are thinking

[[Page 2101]]

about us as anything I have heard. We don't know, and we have to get 
serious here. It is our responsibility. When we are talking about 
trillions, we are talking about real money.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Colorado is 
recognized.

                          ____________________