American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009--Continued

Floor Speech

AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT OF 2009--Continued -- (Senate - February 06, 2009)

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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, my colleagues have described it well, but we all should remember what this is. This is still an $827 billion debt we are handing off to future generations. This is the largest intergenerational transfer of debt in human history, and we spent 3 days now--4 days, I guess, if you count today--debating it. I think the managers of the bill have been patient in allowing us to offer some of our amendments, but to suggest for a minute that the Republicans are slowing this down or that we have had way more than enough time to debate this misses the point.

A trillion dollars--a trillion dollars--is something I think most of us have a hard time grasping. In fact, the borrowing amount that is included in this bill does represent the equivalent of what America as a nation borrowed between the time of the Revolutionary War and the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. We borrowed $800 billion between the Revolutionary War and the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, and we are going to borrow that amount of money in one fell swoop from future generations with this bill.

Much has been said about the discussions in the last few days and how this is going to be a ``bipartisan compromise,'' they are going to reduce the size of the bill. The irony in all this is that the bill as it came over from the House, as has already been noted by my colleagues, was about $820 billion. The bill that we now have in front of us, the so-called compromise, is $827 billion. So it has not gotten smaller coming from the House, it has gotten larger.

A lot of people have gotten up in the Chamber and complained about the House bill and its dimensions and its size, and I think the American people have picked up on that theme because everywhere you go, they talk about this pork-laden bill that came out of the House, and surely the Senate will do something to improve upon it to shrink it in size and get rid of some of the wasteful spending, and yet here we are. We have a so-called compromise, an agreement that is actually larger in size and scope than the bill that came over from the House.

So make no mistake about it, we are borrowing this money from future generations. It is a larger amount of borrowing than was included in the bill that left the House of Representatives. Frankly, we do not know--because we have not seen it yet--about many of the provisions that were included. Many of us have reacted and I think the American public has reacted negatively to much of the wasteful spending that is included in the bill. We have all highlighted the things we think are extraneous and wasteful and do not stimulate the economy, do not grow the economy, do not create jobs.

So we will have an opportunity, hopefully over the weekend, to take a look at it and digest it a little bit. But I think it is fair to say, if at least you are talking about the overall macronumber, that this thing has not gotten any smaller; it has gotten bigger. I would bet by the time we have analyzed this legislation closely, many of the new programs that were created in the bill that was passed by the House and the bill we were debating earlier in the week are continued, and a lot of the new programs that create mandatory spending--not one-time spending--that are allegedly designed to stimulate the economy on a short-term, temporary basis but will have spending that is going to go on and on and on and is going to be a liability for generations to come.

So as we move toward perhaps a final vote on this at some time this weekend--and I suspect the votes are there--the other point I would make--and make no mistake about this either--you cannot call this a bipartisan effort without redefining the word ``bipartisan.'' This came out of the House of Representatives without a single Republican vote. In fact, 11 Democrats in the House voted against it. And here in the Senate, there will be two, perhaps at most three, Republicans who will vote for this. So out of 535 Members of Congress and some 220 or thereabouts Republicans in the Congress, to have 2 hardly qualifies this particular effort as a bipartisan effort.

It went through the House quickly. Republicans were not given an opportunity over there to have impact or have amendments considered. We have had some amendments here. Most of the amendments we have offered that have tried to reduce the size of this thing and change some of the substance of it so it is more targeted, more focused, more focused on job creation--most of those amendments have been defeated. We are faced today with a bill that is actually larger than where we started when this whole initiative got underway in the House of Representatives last week.

So, Mr. President, I hope the American people, as they tune in to the debate, will look very closely at this so-called compromise and give consideration to how this is going to impact them and their family budgets. We all know the statistics. We all know there are people who are hurting in this country, people who have lost their jobs. The people who are going to be hurting the most, however, are the children and grandchildren whom we are going to be handing this debt to--a trillion dollars in debt that we will be handing to our children and our grandchildren--and adding to already what has become a historic high level of debt for this country, so historic that it exceeds by almost two times the average deficit to GDP of many of our allies in the European Union. We are talking about enormous amounts of debt, enormous amounts of borrowing.

As my colleague from Arizona noted, the CBO estimates on job creation as few as 1.3 million jobs for over $800 billion in borrowing. What does that come down to on a per-job basis? Hundreds of thousands of dollars per job.

We can do this better. We can do it in a way that is responsible to the next generation of Americans. I hope when this comes up for a final vote we will be able to defeat it. The American people will get engaged in this effort and let their Senators know how they feel. I believe when that happens, you will start seeing people change their minds about the effort that is in front of us this evening.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and yield back the remainder of my time.

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AMENDMENT NO. 538

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will now be 2 minutes equally divided prior to a vote in relation to amendment No. 538, offered by the Senator from South Dakota, Mr. Thune.

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, there are two ways to stimulate the economy with a trillion dollars. One is to have the Government do it. The other is to have the American people do it. We are going to spend $1 trillion. Seventy percent of our gross domestic product is in the form of consumer spending. What better way than to give consumers' dollars back into their hands and allow them to stimulate the economy. If we are going to borrow a trillion dollars from our children and grandchildren, let's at least do it in a way that helps American families.

Under my amendment, if you are someone who makes under $250,000 a year, you are going to be eligible for a check in the amount of $5,143. If you are a married couple filing jointly, you are going to be eligible for a check for $10,286. Anybody who files a tax return is going to be eligible for a rebate in that amount. I think this is a way to provide real stimulus to the American economy, and I urge my colleagues to adopt this amendment.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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