The Stimulus Bill Has Worked

Floor Speech

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I thought I would never hear such foolishness in all my life. In fact, in California, the stimulus bill has worked. We have thousands of teachers that are in the classroom teaching. In my own district, we have a $970 million stimulus program that is going to provide 6,000 jobs directly to drill a tunnel through the Caldecott Hills so that we can deal with the transportation program.

Thousands of people are working. It was David Stockman on national TV last week who said he no longer believes that you can move this economy forward by cutting taxes. And he was, as I recall, Mr. Reagan's budget director.

The fact of the matter is times have changed, and this call of cutting taxes and ending the stimulus is a lot of foolishness. We need jobs. We need to put people to work. That's the role of the Federal Government. And I would remind my colleagues on the other side that every industrialized nation of the world has done more to stimulate their economy than has ours, and they've been more successful.

We need a new jobs bill. We need those jobs now. And we also need to pay attention to what Mr. Stockman said.

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