OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Consumer Assistance To Recycle And Save Act

Floor Speech

Date: June 9, 2009
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Government Budget and Spending

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Mr. FLAKE. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, this bill is a bad idea spawned by a bad idea that was spawned by still yet another bad idea--and it will likely spawn a lot of other bad ideas in the future.

The first bad idea was to bail out the auto industry in the first place. The second bad idea was for the government to essentially take over the auto industries. We all know that government is not very good at manufacturing anything, so it has to manufacture demand. And that's what this bill is about. It is defying the laws of economics and saying we can manufacture enough demand to keep the auto industries afloat without other measures that they need to take to stay afloat. We can't simply manufacture demand any more than we can defy any of the other laws of economics.

A list was given of those who support this legislation. It says it has broad support from Ford, GM, Chrysler, the Automobile Dealers Association, the labor unions, the Chamber of Commerce. Can anybody tell me honestly if
anybody on that list has ever turned down a government subsidy of any type? I would submit I've never heard it, not in the time that I've been here. So it shouldn't surprise anybody that this list of individuals or organizations supports this legislation. That doesn't mean that we should. We have a duty to represent the taxpayers as well here.

I should note that just this morning there was a press conference about PAYGO--pay-as-you-go, don't pay out anymore than you take in. Where is the money going to come from for this? Perhaps that's why it is on the suspension calendar so that what should govern this place--what kind of PAYGO rules that we have--don't actually apply. But you've got to pay the piper at some point, and we simply can't continue to go down this road.

Madam Speaker, this is a bad idea. This is a clunker of a bill that ought to be retired, and we ought to apply the cash toward our unsustainable deficit.

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