American Recovery And Reinvestment Act Of 2009 - Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. McConnell. Mr. President, the question of whether the economy needs help is not in debate. I don't think there is a single Member of the Senate who believes that no action is the appropriate course for us to take. But one of the good things about reading history is, you learn a good deal. We know for sure the big spending programs of the New Deal did not work. In 1940, unemployment was still 15 percent. It is widely agreed among economists that what got us out of the doldrums we were in during the Great Depression was the beginning of World War II.

We have another example, what is called in Japan ``the lost decade of the 1990s,'' where stimulus packages similar to the ones we are considering tonight were tried again and again and again. And at the end of the 1990s, Japan looked very much like it did at the beginning of the 1990s, except it had a much larger debt.

We have not seen the compromise proposal which has been discussed tonight. I know there has been a good-faith effort on the part of those involved to pare down the size of the underlying Senate measure. But as nearly as we can tell, even after those efforts, it is roughly the same size as the House bill. According to the figures I have been given, the House bill is about $820 billion. The Senate bill, under the compromise, we believe would be about $827 billion. Bear in mind, the interest costs on either of those proposals would be $348 billion. So we are talking about a $1.1 trillion spending measure.

We are already looking at a $1 trillion deficit for this fiscal year. We believe the Secretary of the Treasury and the President are going to be suggesting to us, as early as next week, that we need to do a new, what has commonly been referred to as, TARP round, some kind of additional assistance for the financial system, as early as next week. We are talking about an extraordinarily large amount of money and a crushing debt for our grandchildren.

If most Republicans were convinced that this would work, there might be a greater willingness to support it. But all the historical evidence suggests it is highly unlikely to work. So then you have to balance the likelihood of success versus the crushing debt we are levying on the backs of our children, grandchildren and, yes, their children and the need to finance all of this debt, which many suspect will lead to ever higher and higher interest rates, which could create a new round of problems for our economy.

Let me sum it up by saying, no action is not what any Republican colleague that I know is advocating. But most of us are deeply skeptical this will work. That level of skepticism leads us to believe this course of action should not be chosen.

We had an opportunity to do this on a truly bipartisan basis, and the President said originally he had hoped to get 80 votes. It appears the way this has developed, there will be some bipartisan support but not a lot. It is not likely, in the judgment of most of us, to produce the result we all desire.

I will not be in a position to recommend support for this product, as it has developed, in spite of the best efforts of those who worked on the compromise. I commend them for their willingness to try to work this out. It seems to me it falls far short of the kind of measure we should be passing.

I yield the floor.

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