American Recovery And Reinvestment Act Of 2009
Floor Speech
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Mr. Chairman, this economy is in crisis. The financial system of the country is in crisis. Retirement plans of millions of Americans have been destroyed. Families are angered and terrified. They see layoffs happening all around them. They and their friends are not only losing their jobs, they are losing health coverage. They are losing their ability to help their kids pay for college education.
President Bush, when he saw the initial stages of the problem, got Congress to give him $750 billion to try to calm the chaos on Wall Street.
President Obama is now looking for action to help Main Street. This package is designed to create jobs through construction and through changing the way we do business in the field of energy. It attempts to try to help victims of the recession by providing unemployment insurance, by increasing their ability to get Medicaid coverage if they lose their health care coverage and by increasing their ability to be able to afford COBRA payments if they lose their health insurance. This proposal is also aimed at rebuilding the economy, especially by changing the way this economy works in the energy area, in the science area and in the technology area. And I think we need to be about getting that done.
This bill is hugely expensive. But it is not nearly so costly as continuing business as usual. It has a big price tag because we are dealing with a big problem.
Unfortunately, the debate has been incredibly trivialized. Last night, for instance, we heard speaker after speaker discuss the need to act. But then they would say, ``Well, I can't vote for this package because it contains money for the arts or money for the Mall.'' I would like to put those two items in perspective.
The arts funding in this bill is a tiny fraction of this entire bill. The arts expenditure in this bill represents about 6 cents out of every $1,000 contained in this legislation. People ask, well, what does funding for the arts have to do with jobs? It is very simple. People in the arts field are losing their jobs just like anybody else. You have local arts agencies, you have local orchestras, local symphonies and local arts groups of all kinds who are shutting down, laying people off, and in a number of instances going bankrupt. This is a small, tiny effort to keep some of those people employed over the next 2 years. I make no apology for it. We have an obligation to salvage as many jobs as we can regardless of the fields in which people work.
The second issue is the Mall. People say, ``Well, goodness gracious, what on Earth does spending for the Mall have to do with creating jobs?'' Well, Mr. Chairman, I would point out that, again, the funding for the Mall represents about 25 cents of every $1,000 in this bill, a tiny, tiny fraction. Three-quarters of that amount was directed at trying to preserve the Jefferson Memorial which is slowly sinking into the Tidal Basin and needs to be salvaged. But because these items have become such distractions, we've decided to take several items out. So the Mall is gone. We don't have to worry about refurbishing the Mall any more. That will have to wait for another time.
My point in discussing these two items is to simply express my regret at the way this debate has been trivialized. But I also think that it is revealing because I think it tells us what is really going on. And in my view, what is going on is this. At least one of the leaders in the Republican Caucus advised his caucus members that the way for the Republican minority to behave was to behave ``like a thousand mosquitoes'' to harass the majority. That may suit somebody's legislative style. It would not suit mine.
The CHAIR. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. OBEY. I yield myself 3 additional minutes.
But I think that comment is revelatory because that, for all practical purposes, is what we saw last night, many Members behaving like mosquitoes, focusing on trivia and ignoring the big picture. Some people will say, ``Oh, you're moving too fast.'' I would point out, this work should have been done 3 and 4 months ago. Some of us tried in September to pass a very small economic recovery package. The then-Bush White House would have no part of it. They were not interested. So we've had to wait until now. But it is now essential for us to move. We've got to get this job on the road. Every week that we delay is another 100,000 or more people unemployed. I don't think we want that on any of our consciences.
This package is aimed at creating jobs. It's aimed at helping people who are most impacted by the recession. And it is aimed at trying to modernize and freshen parts of the economy so that we can rebuild the ability of middle-income families to actually increase their income over time.
Mr. Chairman, the main reason we're in this fix today is because over the last almost 20 years or more, we have had very little wage growth and very little income growth on the part of average working families in this country. In fact, if you go back to the year 2001, 95 percent of the income growth in this country has gone into the pockets of the wealthiest 10 percent of American families. That means that the other 90 percent, the great middle American family swath, those families have been trying to keep their heads above water. And how have they been doing it? By borrowing. So they borrowed for housing. They borrowed for tuition. They borrowed for health care. They borrowed for a lot of other things. And now the rubber band has finally snapped. The markets are in chaos, people are panicked, and we've got to try to do something to stabilize the situation. We have to try to reinflate the purchasing power of consumers, and we have to do it in such a way that we build an opportunity for average working families to raise their income again so that they aren't beset by the same economic problems that they were beset by the last 10 years.
With that, Mr. Chairman, I would urge an ``aye'' vote for this package.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.
Mr. Chairman, the minority continually spouts the myth that the minority was not allowed to be involved in the development of this legislation. Here are the facts:
In September, when we developed our first recovery package, I specifically asked the ranking minority member of this committee to please let us know what he felt ought to be in that package and what shouldn't.
In December, we held a hearing with a number of governors and other witnesses on the issue of a stimulus or recovery package. The ranking minority member urged Republican members of the committee not to show up at that hearing, and only three did.
In December again, I sent a letter to every member of the Appropriations Committee, Republican and Democratic alike, asking them for their input. We got a lot of suggestions from both sides of the aisle, although obviously a number of the Republican members preferred to provide their information on a confidential basis because they evidently felt----
The CHAIR. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. OBEY. I yield myself an additional minute. They evidently felt they were being discouraged from participating so that it would be easier for them to vote ``no'' on the final package.
On January 11, I sat down with the ranking member of this committee and discussed in general terms where I thought the bill was going and again urged that we be given any information about what program levels they thought were appropriate; got no real indication of interest.
On January 13, I met and went over what we were thinking about doing in detail with the ranking member of this committee. And again, we got very little indication that there was any real interest at the top of the power ladder in the Republican Caucus in having the Republicans participate in this process.
So if someone says, ``I'm sorry I was shut out,'' but it is they who turned the key in the lock that kept them on the outside, that certainly isn't our fault. We have tried to welcome any advice, any suggestions from any source--not just Members of Congress, but others in this society--and this product reflects that.
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Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.
Mr. Chairman, I am tempted to ask the Chair what year is this? I thought it was--yeah, I didn't think it was 1933--I thought it was 2009, or something close to it. I guess all I would say is, you know, they don't look like Herbert Hoover, but there are an awful lot of people in this Chamber who think like Herbert Hoover, and I think this amendment illustrates that.
If you vote for this amendment, you'll be knocking out all funding for education funding, including every single dollar in this bill to prevent State and local governments from raising taxes in the middle of a recession in order to avoid laying off teachers, in order to avoid laying off speech therapists, school nurses, and the whole shebang.
You would be cutting out all infrastructure. You would be eliminating $30 billion for highway construction. Those jobs go blewy.
You would be eliminating $19 billion for clean water projects, flood control and environmental restoration. Those jobs go blooey.
You would be eliminating all energy funding in this bill, $32 billion to transform the Nation's energy transmission distribution production systems. So those jobs go blooey. And we also lose the chance to modernize this economy.
All science funding, all of the jobs that would be provided in the science area by this bill, those jobs are out the window.
All of the jobs that would be created by giving rural America an opportunity to get wired up with real broadband, just like the rest of the country, that would be out the window, too.
This amendment in my view demonstrates that some people recognize the cost of everything and the value of nothing. It is an amendment that we can ill-afford to pass, and I urge defeat of the amendment.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, the fact is this economy is in mortal danger of absolute collapse. We are trying to avoid that by injecting consumer spending into the economy in hopes that it will reinflate the economy at least to some degree. The fact is that the cost of doing nothing would be astronomical. Of course this package costs money. How much will it cost us if the credit markets totally freeze up? How much will it cost us if we lose employment opportunities for another 3 to 4 million Americans?
How much will it cost us in added unemployment compensation, in added welfare payments and all of those items if we don't do something to stave off economic disaster?
This amendment is primitive economically. It does not recognize the reality of a modern economy. I urge its defeat.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, this amendment in many ways is similar to the Neugebauer amendment, and I would say the same things about it that I said about that amendment.
This essentially throws millions of jobs out the window. All of the jobs for school teachers, for speech therapists and school nurses and the like that would be saved by the State stabilization fund to protect education, all of those jobs out the window by this amendment.
All of the jobs that would come from remodeling and repairing and refurbishing old, worn-out schools under the new modernization program, out the window with those jobs.
All of the infrastructure funding for highway construction, out the window. We heard the Republicans lecture us for 2 days about the importance of that. Now they want to throw it overboard.
All of the jobs that would come from increasing our clean water revolving fund project list and the sewer and water programs around the country, all of those jobs, out the window.
All of the jobs that would come from modernizing our energy grid, out the window.
All of the jobs that come from investing in new science and technology, out the window.
And then all of the help that goes to people through programs like food stamps, out the window.
Mr. Chairman, I want to predict what is going to happen on that side of the aisle on this vote. I predict that just as happened in committee when we got no minority party support for the bill that we produced in committee, when this bill comes to a vote today, virtually all of our Republican friends will vote ``no.'' The bill will then go to the Senate, and after they gauge whether or not that bill can be killed or not, then if the bill comes back from the conference committee and it is obvious that the bill cannot be killed, at that point you will see a significant number of our friends from the Republican side switch and vote ``aye.''
It is an old playbook, Mr. Chairman. That is exactly what they did to FDR on Social Security when they tried to kill it in its crib. And then when they couldn't beat it, they finally joined the parade. That is the same thing that they did to LBJ on Medicare. When they tried to kill and after they couldn't kill it, in the end they went along so that people wouldn't know that they tried to kill it in the first place.
I would hope that sooner or later we could cut through that gamesmanship. I would hope that we would recognize, as Martin Luther King said a long time ago which our President reminded us of in his inaugural, I would hope that we would remember the urgency of now. Every week that we temporize, 100,000 or more Americans lose their jobs. That doesn't just hurt those working Americans, it hurts their families. It hurts the economy, it hurts the neighborhood. It hurts everybody in this society. And it hurts the global economy as well. Sooner or later we have to recognize this is not Herbert Hoover time. The time for action is now.
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