[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3517]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    STIMULUS AND ECONOMIC INDICATORS

  (Mr. ALTMIRE asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. ALTMIRE. Madam Speaker, I continue to hear my friends on the 
other side of the aisle refer to the stimulus bill as a failed policy, 
apparently in the belief that if you say it over and over again it will 
be true. But it's not true, not by a long shot.
  Last year at this time, the stock market was at 6,500 and today it is 
at 10,600. One year ago, during the first quarter of 2009, GDP came in 
at a staggering 6 percent decline, but in the last quarter of 2009 it 
rose almost 6 percent. And monthly job losses, while not where we want 
them to be, are literally 20 times better than they were a year ago 
today.
  Some may say this would have happened anyway and that the stimulus 
had nothing to do with it, but I would ask my colleagues, Madam 
Speaker, to consider that would be quite a coincidence, don't you 
think, for all those economic indicators to begin such a dramatic 
turnaround at precisely the time the stimulus passed. Quite a 
coincidence indeed.

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