Spending

Floor Speech

SPENDING

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to start first by apologizing to Mr. Ryan, whom I just wandered in here and inadvertently walked in front of while he was speaking. So before I start with my speech, I want to apologize to Mr. Ryan for that inappropriate thing I did.

I agree with President Obama when he said this about spending in May of 2008 while on the campaign trail in North Dakota: President Obama, the candidate at that time, said: "$9 trillion of debt, that's just bad. That's not fiscally conservative. And so we're going to have to change our policies. The first thing you do when you're in a hole is what?''

And the crowd reacted, "Stop digging.''

Unfortunately, what President Obama said is not what he has done. In fact, not only did we not stop digging, we threw away our shovel and got a backhoe and started digging double time because in 2008, the debt was too high; but now President Obama has increased spending so much that we have broken historical records on spending.

We started off with the stimulus bill of $787 billion to stimulate the economy. It was promised that its big goal was to cap unemployment at 8 percent. We weren't going to go above 8 percent unemployment, and that's why we had to spend all that money. But, unfortunately, we are sitting here today with 9.4 percent unemployment and rising.

The debt that we have accumulated since the President has come into office has been unbelievable. The $8.5 trillion in 2009 will grow to $16 trillion in 2019. In only 5 months, President Obama and the Democratic majority have managed to spend and borrow more public debt than in the entire history of the United States. That's the past 233 years. So in less than 150 days, they have obligated this country in debt more than the past 233 years.

A couple of weeks ago, I was on the floor of the House talking about the proposed bailout of the automobile industry, which I still contend is an unconstitutional takeover of private industry, based upon the Youngstow case. The administration has recklessly used the taxpayers' money to basically put the administration in charge of General Motors, Chrysler, AIG, Citibank, and the list goes on and on and on.

I don't think the change the American people were looking for when we heard that change was coming was the change where the government took over the micro-management of industry. I really don't believe that was the change Americans were looking for, and yet that's the change we got.

Even worse, when these people who see where the government is going, where the Democrats are taking this country, they say, We'll give our money back. We don't need your bailout money. We want to give it back to you. And they are having trouble trying to give it back. The Obama administration won't take it.

So with all this accumulated debt and with all this spending that we have done, between now and probably the end of July, we are going to take up basically a government health care plan which is going to include another $1 trillion in entitlement health care spending at a time when all experts agree that Medicare, as we have it right now, has real problems and is going to eventually go broke because there are a whole lot more people taking out of the program than are paying into the program and it only gets worse as the baby boomers grow. So we are going to add to that $1 trillion and, don't worry, we'll figure it out. And, of course, we just heard about the energy tax that's coming our way.

You know the real money that we ought to be worrying about? It's not these folks we are bailing out. Who we ought to be worried about are those guys who have lost their jobs. That's the money we ought to be worried about, and that's what the folks back home are worried about.

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