Stimulus Package Report

Floor Speech

STIMULUS PACKAGE REPORT -- (Senate - February 13, 2009)

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Mr. CORNYN. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, the administration and many of my colleagues have argued that we cannot rely upon the same strategies that got us into this mess to get us out of it, and I wholeheartedly agree. I am voting against this stimulus bill because I believe it replicates a failed strategy.

Some of my colleagues have claimed that a ``nay'' vote on the bill means we are for doing nothing. I want to correct that misimpression. That is just not true. We all understand the economy is in crisis. This week, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas said that my State--which had been doing well relative to the rest of the country in job growth and from an economic standpoint--is now officially in recession, which confirmed what small businesses have been telling me for weeks. None of us disputes we are in a crisis. Some of us disagree about what we ought to do in order to get out of this crisis.

I believe a stimulus bill would have been a good idea if it had been focused on the right priorities. That, I believe, was President Obama's original vision. The administration said it wanted a bill that was timely, targeted, and temporary when it came to the spending that is contained in it. I daresay that if this bill had reflected President Obama's priorities, it might well then have received the 80 votes he said he wished it could receive, if it had truly been the product of bipartisan collaboration and cooperation. But it was not.

The fact is, we never saw the bill the President said he wanted. We saw instead that Speaker Pelosi and Democrats in the House essentially wrote the bill themselves and really redefined the word ``stimulus'' to mean nearly anything they wanted in a bill which they knew they could pass because they knew this was an emergency, there was not adequate time to scrutinize the spending and projects, so they knew this was a moving vehicle, and they took every opportunity to load it up with a lot that is certainly not targeted, timely, or temporary and thus breached with the vision President Obama had said he envisioned for the bill.

That is the reason why this bill will receive very little support on this side of the aisle. In fact, out of 535 Members of Congress, I would be surprised if there are more than 3 on this side of the aisle who will support this bill because it was essentially written by the leadership in the House and the leadership in the Senate and without Republican contributions. Indeed, every amendment that was offered, with only rare exception, was rejected upon party-line votes--both in the Finance Committee, on which I serve, and here on the floor. That is not bipartisan. If, in fact, this bill had been produced by a bipartisan process, I have every conviction it could well receive an overwhelming vote on both sides of the aisle in this body. But this was a failed opportunity, I believe.

Many of the programs in this bill are, in fact, wasteful and unnecessary. These are earmarks in all but name only: golf carts, art projects, company cars, and new buildings for Federal employees. And these are only some of the spending plans that we know are contained in this 1,100-page bill which, as the Senator from Kansas pointed out, we did not get a copy of until roughly midnight last night--without enough time for Senators to actually read every line, to discuss it and deliberate on it and to make sure we understand what is in it and that we are not simply wasting taxpayer money. The fact is, we will not have even had 24 hours to look at the conference report before being required to vote on it later today, a report negotiated in secret, behind closed doors, and which seemed to be briefed to reporters and leaked to the press before many Members of Congress actually got a chance to look at it, but we are told: Don't worry. Trust us.

The people in my State of Texas were promised many benefits under this bill, at least $10 billion of direct spending and aid to our State, according to the Democratic policy committee--$10 billion. Well, that is one reason some of my constituents are saying: Senator Cornyn, we want some of that even if we understand your point that in order to get it, my State's share of the cost of this bill will roughly include $90 billion, including interest. Mr. President, $10 billion for $90 billion in debt? That does not strike me as a great bargain. Now, I am not an accountant, and I am not sure the Democratic policy committee's numbers are accurate. I just cannot vouch for them. But accumulating $90 billion in debt to receive about $10 billion in benefits does not strike me as a good deal. And I suspect the deal is not much better for any of our other States.

The math does not work on a national scale either. Even if this bill does "create or preserve'' up to 4 million jobs, that means we are paying about $300,000 per job--$300,000--which is more than five times the median household income in the country.

Now, if we are going to do this, why don't we just give the money directly to the people through lower taxes, letting them keep more of what they earn? They would create and preserve far more jobs than the Government is going to be able to do and we would not be in the process of picking political winners and losers in the process.

But now the tax relief in this bill is even weaker tea than it was before, averaging only about $8 a week, according to some accounts--hardly stimulative. The simple truth is, Government is inefficient at creating jobs, and this morning the Wall Street Journal explained some of the reasons why.

Many Federal agencies, such as the Department of Energy, simply do not have the capacity to spend all of this money as quickly as Congress is appropriating it through this bill. I expect the same is true for many State and local governments. But the fact is, we in Congress have simply not taken the time to find out. Instead, we are determined to turn up the water pressure across all levels of government without thinking about which pipes will burst and whether they can handle the load.

Nobody knows what will happen once this bill is actually implemented. I appreciate the distinguished Senator from Connecticut saying he and the ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee are going to do extensive oversight. But I would suggest, the time to do our due diligence is before passing the legislation, before spending the money, not after it is already spent, when Government does not have the capacity to deal with it.

And then there is this: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that this so-called stimulus bill will actually reduce growth of gross domestic product over the next 10 years.

Because as the CBO says, it will actually--because of such enormous direct Government spending, it will crowd out private investment in the economy and actually hurt the economy, rather than help it as its proponents have promised. That means many millions of our children will have fewer opportunities as they enter the workforce, even as they inherit more and more public debt than any generation in history.

The tragedy of this $1 trillion bill is it ignores hard-learned lessons. We cannot spend our way to prosperity. During the Bush administration over the last 8 years, we spent a lot of money. We strengthened our homeland defenses, we delivered a prescription drug benefit under Medicare, and we increased Federal support for education. Yet all that additional spending--for the war on terror, for homeland defense, prescription drugs, and education--did not protect us from a recession.

In last year's stimulus package, we sent out rebate checks. Remember that was about a year ago where we sent out cash to taxpayers ostensibly as a rebate which, in fact, represented a redistribution of money from people who did pay income taxes to people who don't. You know what. It had virtually zero effect in terms of stimulus. Now we are going to do it all over again, this time under the guise of refundable tax credits, again sending money to people who don't pay income taxes from people who do pay income taxes in a vast redistribution of wealth and replicating the failed example of the stimulus package we passed a year ago.

Now, I understand these are unprecedented economic times. I understand
even the smartest people in the world have a hard time knowing what we should do, but shouldn't we at least prevent repeating mistakes we know don't work? I don't think it takes a rocket scientist or a master of the universe to know that.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 1 more minute.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it is not as though my colleagues are just complaining about the bill on the floor. We offered a constructive alternative to fix housing first that got us into this mess and which, I believe, if we had listened to some constructive suggestions on this side, would help lead us out of it. We also know that letting people keep more of what they earn exerts a much greater multiplier effect in terms of the economy than does direct Government spending. Finally, the idea that we can spend money we don't have on things we can't afford simply defies logic.

I am sorry this is a missed opportunity, both for bipartisanship and an opportunity to actually solve a real problem confronting the American people. I believe there are better ideas available, and those ideas remain available if we simply have the will to embrace them.

I yield the floor.

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