"I thank the Chairman for yielding the time.
"And let me say that a lot of people say around here that they want to oppose this package because you really can’t spend your way out of a recession. And therefore if spending is the answer, then why not spend twice as much and get out of the problems twice as fast?
"But those same people think that maybe you shouldn’t do anything, and I think they are just as wrong to stand here and do nothing in the midst of this great economic crisis.
"But I do think that we have to put a test to anything we try do and it was pointed out earlier and I’ve heard a lot of discussion that if you’re gonna have a stimulus package it should meet certain criteria.
"It ought to be focused, targeted if you will. It ought to be timely, in the sense that it ought to begin to act immediately, and it ought not to last forever.
"And it seems to me, that when I look at those three criteria, this package fails on all three counts.
"It’s not focused. It’s not targeted. It seems to be a “hodge-podge,” just a kind of quickly thrown together, a 152 different appropriations. No strategic vision involved. No underlying theme. Just a little bit of spending on everything that you wanted to spend money on but were afraid to ask until now.
"And I think clearly, in so many cases, doesn’t even pretend to be timely. When you do research, when you do student special education, how does that quickly kick start the economy? It fails that test.
"And finally, if we badly design a package like this, it will continue on, and the $1.2 trillion deficit becomes $2 trillion.
"And so I think there is a better way, and I think Republicans have put forward that, because if we through with a poorly, badly designed stimulus package, we are going to end in the words of Tennessee Ernie Ford, his old song, he said we’ll just end up 'another day older and deeper in debt.' So I think there is a better way and I yield back my time."
###
To see the video of this click here
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/congress/?q=node/77531&id=8923132
