American Recovery And Reinvestment Act Of 2009

Floor Speech

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Ms. NORTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his very important and brilliant work on this bill. I thought I heard my friend talk about putting money in people's pockets. Have you forgotten that is exactly what we did with the last stimulus bill? And, guess what? It went to pay the Saudis, who are now enjoying that. People paid off their high gas bills, they paid down their credit cards. Understand that people are afraid to spend money.

What does this bill do? This is not about ``the economy,'' it's not about ``the bailout.'' This bill is about jobs. What it says is if you give a person not money in his pocket, but a job, you have a better chance of reviving your economy.

The GAO says, indeed, if done properly, a public infrastructure program will pay for itself, and more, over time, by increasing productivity. That is the reason we focus on infrastructure and it's interesting to know that many on the other side are pointing in that direction as well.

I am not against some of the tax cuts, if properly done. But the reason we focus on infrastructure is that it alone has a track record of waking up other parts of the economy. That's what we want to do. This is about jobs. This is not about some generic economy. It is the multiplier effect that we are after. We are after jobs that then create support jobs on down the line. And there is no other expenditure that has been shown to do that as well as infrastructure.

We've got a job to do to make sure, as the chairman says, that this gets done, and gets done quickly. But there can be no debate. Even as we heard testimony, investments in infrastructure have a broader effect and a bigger benefit on the economy than, for example, tax cuts, or any form of tax relief.

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