Alaskan Congressman Don Young voted no today on the Democrat's $154 billion Stimulus Part Two bill, which includes $75 billion of taxpayer funded unused TARP money. This legislation was considered under a completely closed process largely out of the view of the public -- it was unveiled only late last night, there were no hearings or markups, it was not subject to non-partisan budget analysis, and no amendments were allowed on the floor.
"This afternoon the House voted to increase the National debt ceiling by $290 billion," said Rep. Young. "This was followed by a vote to use unused TARP funds as stimulus funds, a use for which they were never intended, instead of paying down the national debt. Where is the sense in that? Speaker Pelosi's Congress is spending money like it's growing in the backyard and the American people are being swindled!
"The REAL way to stimulate an economy is with infrastructure spending. The original $819 billion stimulus spent less than 8% on infrastructure spending, while the rest was a grab bag of pet programs for Democrats. If we had spent the money on infrastructure then, like I said repeatedly, and like I asked the Administration to do, we would already be stimulating the economy, not making last ditch efforts.
"TARP was originally a $700 billion LOAN from the U.S. taxpayer to the large banks to prevent them from collapsing. It was NEVER meant to be a cookie jar for Congress to dip into whenever they feel like! This money belongs to taxpayers and should be returned to the taxpayers."