Obama Administration Statements
Floor Speech
OBAMA ADMINISTRATION STATEMENTS -- (House of Representatives - January 26, 2009)
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Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleagues a question: Who said this: ``The problem with socialism is you eventually run out of someone else's money'' that is the problem with big spending in government when you don't have it?
My good friend, Mr. Poe, just talked about a lot of the waste that is in the so-called stimulus package. But you know, in addition to that there are a lot of other things that worry me, like the things that the President just said and some of his cabinet members just said, and what the vice president just said.
Let me just read to you a quote from President Obama which was on Friday, January 16. He said, talking about the $835 billion stimulus package, ``This plan is a significant down payment on our most urgent challenges.'' Down payment? That is almost $1 trillion, plus the $700 billion that we put in the bailout bill for the banks and Wall Street. So that is $1.5 trillion, and he says this is a down payment on our most urgent challenges.
We are spending so much money that we are going to have hyperinflation down the road. And it won't be just us that will be paying for it; it will be our kids and our grandkids, and the quality of life for everyone is going to suffer.
And then, of course this Sunday, appearing on CBS face the Nation, Vice President Biden said that, ``Obama's choice for Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, will soon recommend to President Obama whether more money is needed beyond the $700 billion already allocated to American banks.''
So the $700 billion, $350 billion of which we don't know anything about, it may have been wasted, at least a large part, and there is another $350 billion in the tank that President Obama is going to use; and now Vice President Biden is saying that they may need more than the $700 billion.
So here, we hear the President talking about a down payment on the money that is going to be spent, $835 billion, and Lord only knows how much is going to be added to that. And then, Vice President Biden says that Mr. Geithner might want more than the $700 billion that has been used for bailing out the banks and Wall Street. And then of course, on Meet the Press Sunday, Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to President Obama, said, ``The government can't afford to spend more than $1 trillion to boost the economy and save financial institutions.''
I would just like to say to my friends who might be paying attention, it is not the government that is spending that money; it is the taxpayers that are spending that money. And we are spending this country right down into a dark black hole from which we may never get out. I mean, it is tragic that we are just throwing money at this, when we should be cutting taxes across the board to give Americans and business more disposable income so they can get this economy moving again in the right direction through the free enterprise system.
President Barack Obama signed his first two Presidential memoranda aimed at getting us on the path to energy independence; and what he said when he signed those just today or yesterday, he said, ``That is a down payment on a broader and sustained effort to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.''
Everything is a down payment, which means they are going to spend trillions more, billions and trillions more of money that they don't have that is going to have to be printed or we are going to have to borrow from someplace like China.
We are putting this country into an economic black hole that we shouldn't be doing right now. What we should be doing is stimulating the economy the right way, by giving the American people part of their hard-earned money back and creating an incentive for business to invest in this country, like cutting the capital gains tax at least for 1 or 2 years. If we did that, we would have true economic recovery that will last, and not something that is just going to last until we print more money.
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