Motion to Go to Conference on H.R. 1, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

Floor Speech

MOTION TO GO TO CONFERENCE ON H.R. 1, AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT OF 2009 -- (House of Representatives - February 10, 2009)

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Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding me this time. I support his motion to instruct and think he has done a very fine job of explaining part of the problems that we have with this bill.

President Obama I understand had promised that, before he would sign any bill, it would be available to the American public for at least 5 days. We are only asking for 48 hours, and yet we are getting excuses after excuses for why this bill cannot be made available for 48 hours. We all remember the rush to fund Katrina, what a debacle that was. And I remember the old saying: act in haste and repent at leisure. We don't know what is in this bill, and we need to know.

Much has been made of the Senate action to cut spending in the bill, but it doesn't show the full picture, because in many ways the Senate bill will lead to an even bigger expansion of the Federal Government and long-term Federal spending than the House bill. If all the new programs proposed by the House and Senate make it into the conference report, we will have created 42 new government programs, programs that the taxpayers likely are now on the hook to continue funding in the future. The Senate bill did nothing to cut the number of existing Federal programs that were included in the House. In fact, the House and Senate combined to propose to expand 87 existing Federal programs, 82 billion from the Senate bill and 93 billion in the House bill. This is not funding for one-time stimulative programs, but will go on to expand these programs, forcing Congress to maintain most, if not all, of these higher funding levels. The public doesn't understand that.

The final stimulus package can include as many as 129 new and expanded Federal programs. And my colleague, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, failed to mention that, in terms of amendments that were accepted by the committees, that after three amendments were accepted by the full Appropriations Committee they were taken out in the Speaker's office when the bill was rewritten in the Speaker's office.

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