Economic Stimulus

Floor Speech

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, according to news reports, President Obama called congressional Democrats down to the White House the other night to talk about treating this bill more like a stimulus and less like a free-for-all. I commend him for the effort, and I appreciate it. But after yesterday, it looks like they might need a little stronger medicine.

The day after meeting with President Obama, Democrats offered several amendments, and every single one of them added to the total cost of what is already nearly a $1 trillion spending bill--$11 billion here, $25 billion there, another $6 billion somewhere else. In other words, real money. By the end of the first day of debate, the Democrats had added more than $41 billion to a bill that just about everybody else in America already thought was way too large.

On this side, Republicans offered some amendments too. All but one of them, however, sought to reduce the cost to the taxpayer. The President has tried to set some priorities. Unfortunately, Democrats keep throwing more money on top of an already incredibly bloated bill. At some point, we are going to have to learn to say no. If we are going to help the economy, we need to get hold of this bill. Making it bigger isn't the answer.

The President seems to recognize the problem. Last night, he repeated his call for discipline and restraint in a letter from OMB Director Peter Orszag. Its message was clear: The Nation is in a financial crisis and this bill should be stripped of everything that doesn't aim to solve the crisis. As Mr. Orszag put it:

We need to recognize that this recovery and reinvestment plan is an extraordinary response to an extraordinary crisis. It should not be seen as an opportunity to abandon the fiscal discipline that we owe each and every taxpayer in spending their money and in keeping the United States strong in a global, interdependent economy.

This bill needs to be cut down, and we should start with permanent spending increases, which only increase the deficit from here on out. This is a permanent spending bill that has been slipped into a bill that was supposed to be timely, temporary, and targeted. Many of these additions may be very worthwhile, but they still don't belong in a stimulus bill. So the first thing we need to do is to make a distinction between what grows the economy and what doesn't. Anything that doesn't ought to be cut out. That is what the President said Monday night, that is what he repeated last night; that we need to be, ``trimming out things that aren't relevant to putting people back
to work right now.'' Add up the interest payments and the total nonstimulus spending in this bill and it is in the hundreds of billions of dollars. That is completely unacceptable. So there is plenty of room to cut wasteful spending. As Mr. Orszag said in his letter, the President is ``insistent that the bill not include any earmarks or special projects.''

Another target-rich area is all the spending for new programs that claim to create new jobs. What people don't realize is how much it costs to create some of these jobs. Analysts have gone through some of the new programs and here is what they have found: $524 million for a program at the State Department that promises to create 388 jobs here at home. That comes to $1.35 million per job. Let me say that again--$1.35 million per job; $125 million to the DC Water and Sewer Authority. That comes to $480,000 per job; $100 million for 300 jobs at USAID. That is $333,333 per job. That is just a few. Surely there are more efficient ways to create jobs with taxpayer dollars than this.

So there is plenty of room to cut in this bill. It is time we started doing some of it. America is already staring at a $1 trillion deficit. The bill before us, in its current form, will cost, with interest, $1.3 trillion. Soon we will vote on an Omnibus appropriations bill that will cost $400 billion. The President is talking about another round of bank bailout funds that some say could cost as much as $4 trillion.

This isn't monopoly money. All of it is borrowed money that the taxpayers will have to pay back at some point. I think we owe it to them to lay all these things out on the table now so America can see what it is getting into. I think we owe it to the American people to show some restraint on the bill that is before us.

Republicans have a number of better ideas for making this bill simpler, more targeted, and more directly beneficial to workers and to homeowners. We have been sharing those ideas for the last week.

Economists from both sides of the political spectrum recognize that housing is at the root of the current downturn. We believe we should fix this problem first before we do anything else--certainly before we build a fish barrier, spruce up offices for bureaucrats or build a water slide. I mean, let's get serious. We can either talk about fixing the problem or we can take immediate action to help 40 million Americans stay in their homes or buy a new one. That is our choice.

We need to act now, and soon we will be voting on a Republican better idea to do that. But first there are plenty of areas in this bill we can cut, even before we consider some of the good Republican ideas that President Obama has said he wants to incorporate into the final bill.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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