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“MOTION TO GO TO CONFERENCE ON H.R. 1, AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT OF 2009” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Energy was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H1090-H1102 on Feb. 10, 2009.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
MOTION TO GO TO CONFERENCE ON H.R. 1, AMERICAN RECOVERY AND
REINVESTMENT ACT OF 2009
Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 1 of rule XXII and by direction of the Committee on Appropriations, I move to take from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 1) making supplemental appropriations for job preservation and creation, infrastructure investment, energy efficiency and science, assistance to the unemployed, and State and local fiscal stabilization, for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009, and for other purposes, with a Senate amendment thereto, disagree to the Senate amendment, and agree to the conference asked by the Senate.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Wisconsin is recognized for 1 hour.
Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, for purposes of debate only, I yield 30 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis). All time yielded during consideration of the motion is for debate only.
Madam Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.
I think the need for this action is obvious. The country is in trouble economically. We need to put an economic recovery package in place just as soon as possible. Going to conference is the next step to making that happen, and I would urge support for the motion.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume.
It was less than 2 weeks ago that we debated the House version of the economic stimulus package. When we began this process, I was hopeful that the House and the Senate would heed the President's call for bipartisanship. Madam Speaker, clearly, that has not occurred. The House and Senate have now cleared their respective versions of the same legislation. To date, eleven Democrats have opposed the stimulus package in the House, and only three Republicans--that is three Republicans--have supported it in the Senate.
The manner in which this package was developed is the clearest demonstration to date that, while the President expresses his sincere interest in bipartisan collaboration, his own leadership in the House stubbornly clings to a top-down approach to governing. That top-down approach to governing that has dominated our politics in the House these last 2 years is the single greatest impediment to bipartisanship and is the greatest threat to this institution that most of us love so much.
I am absolutely convinced that, given the opportunity, the chairmen and ranking members of each of the twelve appropriations subcommittees could have and would have worked together responsibly to develop a bipartisan piece of legislation that would stimulate the economy and would create millions and millions of American jobs. Given the opportunity, Republicans and Democrats would have produced a package that would have garnered the support of the House majority on both sides of the aisle. That, however, did not occur with this package.
The chairmen and ranking members of our Appropriations subcommittees were never given an opportunity to work in such a fashion. Not only were subcommittee chairmen and ranking members prevented from working constructively, but the majority staff of the Appropriations Committee was instructed on more than one occasion not to engage or to share information with their minority counterparts. Think about that, Madam Speaker. At the subcommittee level, we have very fine staff, very fine members who spend time concentrating in areas of expertise, and they were told by the top of the committee, ``do not communicate at the staff level within the subcommittees,'' cutting off any sensible form or chance for compromise.
Bipartisanship is a pragmatic and constructive willingness on the part of both parties to engage in a beneficial give-and-take on various areas of disagreement to form consensus. Given this definition and approach and the manner in which critical legislation is now written, bipartisanship in this House really is no longer possible. It certainly does not even appear to be desired by the leadership.
I have said publicly and sincerely on several occasions that I want to see our President be successful. The urgency of the present economic situation demands that we work together in a constructive fashion, but that cannot occur when decisions are made solely by a handful of powerful leaders while the voices of other Members, who have much to contribute, are routinely disregarded and are summarily dismissed.
Spoken during our floor debate when he was discussing this process just 11 years ago, the words of Chairman Obey ring particularly true when we consider my frustration at this moment. I quote my chairman, Mr. Obey.
He said, ``This is no way to establish bipartisan consensus. This is no way to establish a decent working relationship between the executive and legislative branches. We need to try to find common ground between the two parties.''
We are proceeding with a motion to go to conference, but let us not for one moment believe this stimulus package is an example of bipartisan legislation, because it is not now nor was it intended to be from the very beginning.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. OBEY. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock).
Mr. McCLINTOCK. Madam Speaker, before we continue with a stimulus policy that has consistently failed to stimulate anything other than the government, I think the supporters of this program need to answer some very simple questions.
For example, the President, himself, told us yesterday that this $800 billion of new spending is going to produce 4 million new jobs. Well, that's great until you pull out a pocket calculator and realize that that comes to $200,000 per job.
Question: Why don't we just send those 4 million lucky families a check for $100,000 and save half of what the President wants to spend according to his own numbers?
The President, himself, told audiences this weekend that the spending bill would produce a renaissance of highway, road and bridge construction.
Question: If that is the object of this bill, why is only 3 percent of the funding going for that purpose?
The Congressional Budget Office last week noted that the current spending bill, although producing temporary relief, will incur so much long-term debt as to reduce overall GDP growth over the next decade.
Question: How do we strengthen our economic future by leaving the next generation with an unprecedented debt that will take decades to pay off?
We know of many cases where massive government spending and borrowing has destroyed economies and has brought down great nations. One need look no further than to the old Soviet Union.
Question: When in the recorded history of civilization has massive public spending ever stimulated an economy?
It did not work in Japan in the 1990s. The Japanese call that their lost decade. It did not work in America in the 1930s. The unemployment rate in 1939, after nearly a decade of New Deal spending, was the same as it was in 1931.
Madam Speaker, history warns us that bankrupt nations do not last very long. Before we continue with yet another round of massive spending and borrowing, I suggest we get some answers to these inconvenient questions.
Mr. OBEY. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I am privileged to yield 2 minutes to my colleague, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Latham).
Mr. LATHAM. Madam Speaker, like many people, I have had a chance to at least look briefly at this bill. I have grave concerns about what it is going to do.
We are spending more than $1 trillion in a hurried-up fashion here with very little oversight and with no hearings. Everything is just rushing forward. Everyone understands that we have got a real problem--
an economic downturn in this country. We've got to do something, and we've got to act quickly to save those jobs, those opportunities for our families. We've got to get the country back on its feet again so it can prosper.
We had a proposal brought forth that was totally ignored--the idea of creating over 6 million new jobs at half the cost of what this bill costs--and it has been totally thrown aside. This would have put money immediately into people's pockets. It would have had them spending and getting this economy going and rolling again. That is exactly what we need to do, but we've never had an opportunity to put those into this bill.
It's not only what the bill does as far as spending over $1 trillion. Some provisions in here make dramatic changes in the way our government operates. When we look at reversing welfare reform, the one great thing back from the Clinton administration, this is going to turn that on its head and allow people to stay on welfare for as long as they would like.
I think it also is very, very serious when we talk about a major change in health care reform in that this is going to put the government in charge of rationing health care, standing between you and your doctor. This is something that at least there should be some debate about. Somebody should have a chance to offer amendments to change these bills, these ideas that make massive changes in the fundamental way that we have welfare reform and the way our health care is delivered in this country.
Madam Speaker, to me, this is outrageous. We have got to step back. We have got to think about these things before we just jump into these major changes that are going to do great harm to our economy and to the future of our children and grandchildren.
Mr. OBEY. I continue to reserve the balance of my time
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to my colleague, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Kline).
Mr. KLINE of Minnesota. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of a meaningful solution to the economic challenges facing our Nation. The House Republican economic recovery plan, for example, would have created 6.2 million new jobs, and would have provided critical tax breaks for the small businesses that are the engine of our economy.
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Unfortunately, today the Senate passed a borrow-and-spend bill that is full of wasteful spending and fails to provide the immediate relief the American people demand.
According to Rasmussen Reports, 62 percent of Americans want more tax cuts and less government spending in an economic stimulus plan. Yet only one-third of the Senate's bill focuses on that much-needed tax relief.
Madam Speaker, I've been contacted by hundreds and hundreds of Minnesotans who understand the need for meaningful relief. These men and women are frustrated with ineffective legislation that favors the creation of new government programs over new jobs--and saddles our children and grandchildren with more debt and bigger government.
One of these Minnesotans owns a trucking company. And he reported that he's had the worst quarter and the worst months in the history of his company, which is a second-generation company. They're having to lay off truckers. It's hard times. He does not support the Senate stimulus package.
One of those Minnesotans is another employer, a small businessman, had over 150 employees. They've had no new orders for systems since this summer. They, too, were having to lay off employees.
We understand that there are people hurting, but neither of these Minnesotans favors this non-stimulus plan.
Madam Speaker, let's listen to these American people. Let's listen to the Minnesotans. They deserve a stimulus that works.
Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve my time.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I am glad to yield 1 minute to Mr. Roe of Tennessee.
(Mr. ROE of Tennessee asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. ROE of Tennessee. Madam Speaker, this weekend the administration warned that our economic crisis could become a catastrophe if we failed to pass an economic stimulus package. Madam Speaker, avoiding a catastrophe is exactly why House Republicans are opposed to the package that the House considered just 2 weeks ago. The Senate bill, being hailed as a compromise by some, spends more money than the House bill did and still contains too much wasteful spending.
We strongly support a stimulus bill, but it must be a stimulus bill that grows our economy, creates jobs, and doesn't saddle our grandchildren with unnecessary debt. Purchasing golf carts for the Federal Government is not stimulative; neither is money designed to follow-up the census which doesn't even begin for 2 years.
We support reducing taxes for working families and small businesses and improving our roads and water and sewer infrastructure. All of this lays the groundwork for future growth and is a much wiser use for our precious tax dollars.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to recognize Mr. Poe of Texas for 2 minutes.
Mr. POE of Texas. Madam Speaker, it's been said: ``a billion dollars here, a billion dollars there, eventually we're going to be talking about real money.'' Well, we're talking about real money in this stimulus package. Madam Speaker, let's make it clear. Spending money doesn't automatically stimulate the economy. That is a myth.
Now, this package is, oh, 800, $900 billion. How much is that? Well, that means different things to different folks. Down in Australia, that is the entire cost of the Australian economy. Or looking at it another way, $900 billion, if you take every junior and senior in high school in every high school in the United States, this money could give them a 4-year college education at a private university--now we're talking about real money--and still have $150 billion left over.
Or looking at it another way, you could pay off 90 percent of the home mortgages in the United States.
This is serious business, Madam Speaker, and this bill does not stimulate the economy; it just spends a lot of taxpayer money.
What we should do is let Americans keep more of their own money. Cut taxes for those that pay taxes. Then they have their own money, they can spend it the way they want to, and they can stimulate our economy.
And that's just the way it is.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to recognize the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) for 2 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, I can't tell you how it warms my heart to hear the former chairman say he was pleased to yield me time. I appreciate that.
But one thing that isn't pleasing is this so-called stimulus bill. It's an abomination. We should not be doing this to future generations. I've got two pairs of words for you: One pair of words, tax holiday; another pair of words, American energy.
Our President went from promising all of these millions of jobs, three million, I believe, initially through this stimulus package to now saying we're going to create or save four million jobs. Why would we add ``save''? Because there is no way to document saved jobs. So whatever happens, ``Well, we lost four million jobs, but gee, we saved four million in the process.'' I guess that's what will be said at the end of it.
The problem is this is not going to stimulate the economy when over half of it, 60 percent of it, is not going to be spent for a couple of years or so.
The economy needs help now, and we need to do it without devastating our children and grandchildren. I used to sentence people for doing unconscionable things to their children or to children, and here now I'm a part of a body who wants to live better by taxing and hammering future generations. That's not right. There is nothing virtuous, there is nothing noble in loading down our future generations with this kind of debt.
And, in fact, my Democrat colleagues got in the majority by talking in 2005 and 2006 about the deficit spending, and they were right then. We shouldn't be doing it. Tax cuts got us record revenue in the Treasury; deficit spending got us in trouble. Greed got us in trouble. The immorality of people wanting it for themselves was just too much.
It is time to get back to morality and not loading up future generations, not making our children suffer for the sins of their parents. Let's don't sin any more by being immoral in the way we throw money. Let's do this the right way.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to recognize a member of the committee, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen), for 3 minutes.
Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Madam Speaker, I strongly support an economic stimulus bill that will produce jobs that actually put people to work, especially in the private sector. H.R. 1 does not do that.
The notion that we need to expand State and Federal public employee rolls with a massive dollar increase in existing and entirely new domestic programs is not what my constituents back home want. My constituents are losing their jobs on Main Street and on Wall Street. The value of their homes has been reduced. Some teeter on the brink of forfeiture. Families' savings and investment accounts have been savaged.
And in this context, the House leadership proposes a bill that guarantees a burst of state and Federal hiring: bureaucracies that will undoubtedly handcuff small businesses with more rules and more regulation.
What's wrong with this picture?
As an illustration of what's wrong with the bill, let's look at the energy and water portfolio. Frankly, more funding has been proposed in H.R. 1 than could be possibly spent intelligently and effectively.
Under the bill, the budget for Department of Energy grants and loans explodes to $30 billion. This sum alone is greater than the entire budget for the whole Department of Energy last year. Instead of being our premier R&D agency, DOE will become a grants-manager for tens of billions of borrowed money, much of it spent in expanding the Federal workforce. And what's left will expand State governments. Little will filter down to people who actually work with their hands, actually make things more efficiently, and advance technology.
This is all a recipe for more dysfunction for government acquisition systems that can barely handle their own workloads today. Are the State governments prepared? Their manpower is down, and those who might provide oversight and accountability are walking the unemployment lines as we speak.
My colleagues, remember Katrina: Poor planning, shoddy execution, noncompetitive contract awards, abuse of contractor flexibility, inadequate oversight, a climate for waste, an open invitation to fraud and corruption.
Madam Speaker, there are many reasons to oppose H.R. 1. Those who do not remember the lessons of Katrina are bound to repeat those mistakes. In the meantime, we're missing a precious opportunity to create real private sector jobs and prevent layoffs.
I've heard from my constituents in New Jersey. They want a stimulus package, but they don't want this one.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, could I inquire about the time remaining on each side.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) has 12 minutes remaining; the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) has 29\1/2\ minutes remaining.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland).
Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to thank the ranking member for recognizing me.
And I want to just say, you know, as I spent time at home this weekend, I would see the polls were 38 percent of the American people in favor of this stimulus bill. Evidently those 38 percent don't understand that this is a government-expansion spending bill and not really a stimulus bill. But I don't know who the 38 percent of those people were because everybody I talked to in my district was upset that we were trying to create new government spending programs and claim it to be a stimulus.
There are 20 new programs in this stimulus bill that have never been in the government before, 20 new programs. There needs to be some programs that we find that are inefficient. I can't believe that every program in our government is working to where it services the citizens.
But let me say this: The things that we are spending money on, such as car credits--a lot of people say, ``Good. Car credits are great,'' but they're for two-wheel, three-wheel electric plug-ins; not for the cars that are sitting on these lots today that these dealers need to get rid of.
So we need to look at what the Republican plan did and actually give people money to keep in their own pocket. In fact, they wouldn't even have to give it. They could just keep it from what they're paying right now in their Federal taxes. This is a way to stimulate the economy. Spending other people's money does not stimulate. Spending other people's money does not stimulate. We are spending people's money that are the taxpayers. They need to spend that money. We're borrowing money from foreign countries to be able to do this. We're printing money at a very rapid rate.
What we need to be doing, Madam Speaker, is looking at ways to create the jobs that the average person that's standing in the unemployment line can have right now, not create more government and create more government jobs, but create more jobs in the private sector.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I am proud to yield 1 minute to the Republican leader, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner).
Mr. BOEHNER. Madam Speaker, let me thank my colleague from California for yielding.
Today, earlier, President Obama held a town hall meeting in Fort Meyer, Florida. He discussed the need to create more jobs for Florida families and families across our country. This has been one of our shared goals since the outset of this process. And that's why House Republicans have crafted a plan that creates the most jobs in the shortest period of time. In fact, our plan would create 141,000 more jobs for Florida families than the package that's under consideration.
And overall, it would create twice as many jobs, some 6.2 million jobs in all, at half of the price of the bill that's moving through Congress.
And don't just take my word for it. This is based on the methodology used by President Obama's own nominee as chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, Dr. Christina Romer.
How? How do we create all of these jobs? We encourage investment and create jobs by letting families, small businesses, home buyers and job seekers keep more of what they earn. Unfortunately, the House and Senate bills take us in a different direction.
We already know that they rely on slow-moving, wasteful spending here in Washington, but there's more.
The plan that's currently on the table tries to take advantage of the crisis in our economy to enact a series of liberal policy proposals that have nothing to do with economic recovery. It discourages Americans from working, loosens welfare reform's work requirements, and encourages more Americans to become dependent on government programs. And through a proposal called Comparative Effectiveness, it aims to put the Federal Government in charge of some of the most important life and death decisions that families face.
The bill is supposed to be about creating jobs, not about reversing welfare reform or letting government ration out America's health care options.
There is still time for both parties to work together to craft a bill that puts job creation first and foremost. But I think it's up to the majority to help make that happen.
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Republicans want to work in a constructive way to help families during this economic crisis, and we want to answer the President's call for bipartisanship and his call for a plan that creates jobs first and foremost. The bills being considered don't do that.
We do believe that our economy is in a crisis. Families and small businesses are hurting, and the government must act, but we must act in a prudent way that does what we all want to do, and that's to preserve jobs in America and to create more jobs in America.
Unfortunately, the plans that we're seeing don't do that. The plan that we put on the table for consideration would, in fact, create 6.2 million jobs over the next 2 years, twice as many jobs as the bills being considered at half the price tag.
It's time to work in a bipartisan way to solve this crisis, and I would urge my colleagues to listen to our ideas and work with us on behalf of the American people.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess).
Mr. BURGESS. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Madam Speaker, I would just urge my colleagues to take a second look before committing this bill to conference.
We're making some fundamental changes in the way health care is administered in this country as a result of this bill, which has nothing to do with the creation of jobs but everything to do with the government taking a greater and greater share of our personal liberties that pertains to health care.
Certainly the funding cliffs that are present in the funding for Medicaid and COBRA--COBRA extending medical benefits for 12 months, Medicaid an additional 18 months--but what happens at the end of that 12- or 18-month interval? Do those individuals just fall off a cliff or will Congress have to come back with yet more money?
Already we're talking about an $800 billion bill. We don't include in that the cost of capital. If we were honest about this bill and included the cost of capital and the cost of funding past those funding cliffs, this, in reality, would be a $3 trillion product.
And, Madam Speaker, I spent an hour today down at the Bureau of Debt and watched $32 billion be auctioned off shortly before one o'clock today. That was the third time today that they've had an auction down there. This is an incredible amount of paper that we're selling on the worldwide market, and you have to wonder how long the market can sustain that.
And perhaps just as pernicious, we heard the minority leader mention the comparative effect of this statute, the health information technology statute, something that I support, that I believe in but really has no place in a stimulus bill. Look at the power, look at the power we're giving to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology that provides medical decisions, sets the time and place of care. We're devolving an enormous amount of power to an individual that none of us, in fact, even know who that is at the present time.
We're politicizing health care in this country in a way that's never been done before, and we at least ought to be honest with the American people about what we're doing and not do it under the cover of night.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) 2 minutes.
Mr. GINGREY of Georgia. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I stand in opposition to H.R. 1, and I can stand here and talk about specific line items in the bill that were first presented to us in the House, not a whole lot different from what's coming over from the Senate, but the bottom line is that we on this side of the aisle have an alternative that would do a whole lot better, and I don't think I can say it any better than comparing my own State of Georgia.
The Republican alternative would create 186,000 jobs in the State of Georgia. This bill would create 113,000. That's a difference of 73,000 jobs, and we do it, Madam Speaker, with much less spending, in fact less than half of the spending that's in this current bill. And we do it by making sure that the tax cuts are directed towards small businessmen and -women and, of course, lowering the capital gains and the tax on dividends.
So we get money in the hands of the people immediately, 5 percent cut in taxes across-the-board, every marginal rate, and last but not least, Madam Speaker, to cut spending 1 percent across the board, with the exception, of course, of national defense.
I've heard President Obama and others say, you know, we need to do something right now; don't just stand there, do something. But this clearly is a time that we need to take a deep breath and make sure that we do the right thing because the downside risk of adding $1.2 trillion worth of debt to a 10.7 current debt, I don't know how our children and grandchildren will ever pay for this, and the chances of it being successful are slim and none in my opinion.
I'm opposed to it. I think we can do better.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I'm proud to yield 2 minutes to Mr. Cole from Oklahoma, a member of the committee.
Mr. COLE. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Madam Speaker, I rise today to speak against going to conference on the stimulus bill, H.R. 1. However, I'm also rising in support of keeping the conference open.
The time has come to expose this legislation for what it is, a grab bag of special interest projects that will do little in the way of stimulating the economy and will significantly increase our deficit, literally risking our bond rating and triggering future tax increases.
Never in the history of our country has so much money been spent in so little time with, frankly, so little oversight.
As a new member of the Appropriations Committee, a gentleman asked me, well, what's it like? I said, I don't know. I showed up to one meeting. We spent $358 billion in about 3 hours. It was an open process. There was full debate, but there hadn't been subcommittee meetings, and there wasn't time for genuine discussion and give-and-
take, in my view.
This train is moving so fast down the tracks, it's hard to determine, frankly, what's in the legislative package from day-to-day, and unfortunately, in my opinion, the package has not been bipartisan in nature. It's not been developed through negotiation and discussion.
Madam Speaker, I trust the President when he says that this should be a bipartisan package, and frankly, I wish the Democratic leadership in the House had seen fit to make it so. But a bipartisan package generally requires the two sides to sit down and negotiate, and frankly, genuinely bipartisan legislation usually requires that some Members on each side vote ``no.''
What we have today is a package that's going to be rammed through on a largely partisan vote where, frankly, the minority feels like it hasn't had an opportunity to participate. Again, I have no problem with that because that's the legislative process. As our friends like to say, they won the election.
Of course, so did we. Everybody that's in this body won an election. Everybody has a point of view, and if you want to have genuine bipartisan legislation, then you have to involve the other side.
The route we're taking will end up, again, in virtually universal support by Democrats and universal opposition by Republicans. It doesn't have to be that way. We could have either debated the Republican alternative or done something else and found common ground.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. May I inquire of the chairman if he has any additional speakers. I'm going to reserve and yield back my time.
Mr. OBEY. I have one speaker, myself.
Mr. LEWIS of California. I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I don't intend to take a lot of time, but I do want to respond to some of the claims and comments made today in opposition to this legislation.
First of all, I do want to thank the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole). Like myself, he is a committed partisan, and I think, like myself, he is also an institutionalist, and while I recognize that he very much differs with the product that we have before us, I appreciate the fact that he did indicate that the committee consideration of this bill was an open process.
Let me simply respond to a few of the comments made by my friends on the other side of the aisle.
We're told by numerous speakers that this package is too large. In fact, I fear that it may be too small. We can't determine the proper size of any economic recovery package unless we have some understanding and some anticipation of the size of the problem that it is meant to alleviate.
My old friend Archie the Cockroach, for instance, in talking about the need for proportion said once, In life you always need proportion.
``Of what use is it for a queen bee to fall in love with a bull?''
I think that if we have large and serious economic crisis coming at us, that response needs to be large, bold and aggressive, and that's what I believe the President's package is.
Now, this package is $820 billion. It represents less than 6 percent of our total gross domestic product spread over several years. I would point out that when World War II hit us governmental spending went from 10 percent of GDP in 1940 to 44 percent in 1943 and 1944, a huge percentage, an increase of 34 percent. That was to save the country in time of war.
I would submit that the challenge to our economy today is every bit as large as the challenge of World War II was to this country in another time because we have been faced with the prospect of virtually total collapse of the financial sector of this economy.
Under the previous President, President Bush, when the crisis finally hit, this Congress gave him the benefit of the doubt, and even though we, many of us, had strong misgivings about the wisdom of the proposal, and even though many of us were frustrated by the fact that Secretary Paulson would not provide sufficient relief on the mortgage front, we nonetheless supported the President's request because we were told that the alternative was to see an absolute freeze up and collapse of the credit markets in this country, with disastrous results. Not just for those Wall Street wizards who helped cause the problem, but would also have resulted in the crushing of everybody else below them on the economic ladder as they fell from their Wall Street perches.
And now the President is asking us to do two additional things. His Secretary of the Treasury today is scheduled to explain to the country what their second step will be with respect to trying to stabilize the financial system in this country and, at the same time, trying to do something to deal with the horrendous collapse of housing prices and the horrendous collapse of people's equity in their homes. And then the next thing the President wants us to do is to pass this package.
Now, this package, as I've said, is a huge, huge endeavor. It is certainly of the size that would have been shocking just a few months ago, but it's responding to a problem just as large, and I want to show you what we're trying to respond to.
This chart shows projected unemployment levels from now through 2 years from today. It was presented by Mr. Mark Zandi, one of the principal economic advisers to Senator McCain in the last campaign. He represents Moody's Economy.com. The red bars indicate what he expects to happen to the unemployment levels if we do nothing. What he expects is that unemployment will rise from over 7 percent, slightly over 7 percent where it is today, to almost 11 percent and perhaps even higher 2 years from now.
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In other words, he sees the economy sliding ever more deeply into the abyss over the next 2 years if we do nothing.
The blue bars represent what he thinks the unemployment levels will be if we do pass a $750 billion economic recovery package. Even then, he projects that by the second quarter of--not this year, but next year--he projects that unemployment will still have risen to around 9 percent.
As the President said last night, what that means is that no matter what we do, we are going to have a very, very rough year. And it is his hope and it is the expectation of most economists that if we pass this package, or something close to it, then we will be able to mitigate the rise in unemployment, that we will be able to reduce the expected levels of unemployment by at least 2 percent. And we hope what that will do is to begin to bring additional revenues back into the Treasury and, at the same time, in combination with the other actions of the President, restore a modicum of public confidence in the economy. Between those two actions, get the economy moving again, slowly but surely.
So this package attempts to use the only tool that we have available to get the economy going again. Normally, when we run into economic trouble, what we would do is rely on monetary policy in order to get us out of it. The problem is we have already fired that gun. The Federal Reserve has already brought interest rates down to record low levels. So we don't have that bullet in the gun any more.
About the only bullet left that we can fire is one of fiscal stimulus. And that is what this bill tries to do. It tries to make up for the fact that over the next 2\1/2\ years we are expected to have a
$2.5 trillion hole in the economy because of the collapse of consumer purchasing power. And, as a result, what the President is trying to do is to partially fill that economic hole to mitigate the expected steep rise in unemployment.
And so the President is trying, in essence, to create or preserve about 4 million jobs by providing additional funding to produce clean, efficient energy alternatives. He wants to provide more jobs by trying to transform our economy through beefing up science and technology. He wants to provide more jobs by modernizing roads, bridges, transit, and waterways, to deal with the crumbling infrastructure of the last 30 years.
He wants to preserve hundreds of thousands of jobs by helping States to maintain their education budgets as their own revenue sources collapse so that we don't have to lay off school teachers; so we don't have to lay off janitors; so we don't have to lay off speech therapists and guidance counselors; so that we don't have to lay off cops; so that we don't have to lay off park workers.
In addition, he wants us to provide tax cuts in order to enable the middle class to finally get a little better deal on the tax side of the ledger. He wants to help workers hurt by the economy by providing additional help for those who have lost their jobs by way of an extension and an expansion of unemployment compensation. And he also wants to help those who have lost their health insurance by providing greater access to Medicaid and by providing some help to keep up with what is called their COBRA payments.
So that is what this package is all about. It is not perfect by any means. And we have substantial, but I hope not overpowering, differences between us and the Senate.
And so the purpose of this motion is to simply have us get on with it. To take the next step we know that we have to take if we are going to do something constructive to move this country forward. We can all debate the fine points of this package until the cows come home, as they say in my area of the country. But the fact is, sooner or later we need to take heed and remember what Franklin Roosevelt said in a not very different situation years ago when he said, ``We need action, and action now.''
This package is meant to begin that process. I would urge Members to support the motion.
Mr. OLVER. Madam Speaker, I support quickly moving forward with a recovery package to put America back to work.
The reckless actions of much of Wall Street, coupled with years of inadequate regulatory oversight, have led to a housing and financial crisis of enormous proportions. Spiraling foreclosure rates have put millions of families on the brink of disaster and infected the entire economy. We must stop an economic collapse and throw a life-line to the millions of people that are struggling to find work and support their families.
In the last four months alone, the economy has lost over 2 million jobs. By the end of 2009, an additional 3-5 million Americans could lose their jobs and without this package, the unemployment rate is likely to rise to 12 percent.
Any final bill must create new jobs by: repairing and improving our nation's roads, highways and bridges and improve and expand public transportation in urban and rural areas. Surface transportation funding in the House bill would create more than 1 million new jobs.
The House and Senate bills would also create jobs by investing in safety and capacity improvements at our Nation's airports; capital investments in Amtrak and intercity passenger rail; and energy retrofits in our Nation's public housing, HUD assisted housing and Indian reservation housing.
This is just some of the important job creating stimulus in this bill.
It is important that we act quickly to bolster the sagging economy.
I strongly support this investment package because it will help put America back to work and improve our transportation and housing infrastructure.
Mr. NEAL of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to be here to support this motion to go to conference on the Recovery bill. It has been some time since we have had an actual conference on a tax bill. The purpose of conferences is to work out differences between the chambers and that give-and-take will usually result in a better bill.
I commend Chairman Rangel for crafting a responsible tax title that will deliver substantial relief in tough economic times. This means 95 percent of all taxpayers will see tax cuts through the Making Work Pay credit, including 2 million families in Massachusetts. Working families will also benefit from improvements to the child tax credit, the earned income tax credit, and a new higher education tax credit.
Businesses across the country will benefit from bonus depreciation and small business expensing provisions, as well as relief for those businesses with net operating losses. And state and local governments will see substantial relief for infrastructure needs through greater bond authority and lowering the costs to borrow.
The Senate has worked its will and made a number of changes to our House bill, which our conferees should give due consideration. Twenty-
six million families will be protected from the AMT under the Senate bill, and that is a provision I am hopeful we can include here. It is something we will enact this year, no doubt. But sooner is better than later.
However, some of the spending cuts, especially for education and higher education, could eliminate the possibility for many of our schools, colleges, and universities to pull out of this economic slump, where credit is tight and borrowing prohibitively expensive.
I am very optimistic and have great confidence in our conferees to craft a recovery package that lifts our economy out of the mire. As the President has directed, time is of the essence. So I urge my colleagues to support this motion.
Mr. CAPUANO. Madam Speaker, I supported H.R. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, because we need to create and preserve jobs. In the final analysis I believe that this bill offers enough stimulus to earn a ``Yes'' vote from me. There is no question that help is needed. Each day seems to bring more sobering news about layoffs and business closings. This bill will serve as a boost for job creation and for our overall economy. It is estimated that the legislation, once enacted, will create or save millions of American jobs. I also believe, however, that this legislation relies too heavily on tax cuts to stimulate the economy and a fair amount of the spending, though generally desirable, does not offer a truly stimulative aspect. Nevertheless, on balance I felt that it was better to accept an imperfect bill than wait for a perfect measure that may never materialize. We simply cannot wait much longer to provide as much relief as possible to the American public.
Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the motion.
The previous question was ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey).
The motion was agreed to.
Motion to Instruct
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I offer a motion to instruct conferees.
The Clerk read as follows:
Mr. Lewis of California moves to instruct the managers on the part of the House that they shall not record their approval of the final conference agreement (as such term is used in clause 12(a)(4) of rule XXII of the Rules of the House of Representatives) unless the text of such agreement has been available to the managers in an electronic, searchable, and downloadable form for at least 48 hours prior to the time described in such clause.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 7 of rule XXII, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) and the gentleman from Wisconsin
(Mr. Obey) each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
The debate over the Pelosi-Obey nonstimulus package has often focused on the nearly $1 trillion it will spend, much of it in ways that will not stimulate our economy or create badly needed jobs. It will, however, stimulate tremendous growth in the size and scope of the Federal Government and our national debt.
Well-meaning people can disagree about this legislation, but the simple truth is that nearly 2 weeks after it passed the House, we are still discovering every day what exactly is in this package. The Senate just passed its own version this afternoon and I'm certain that Senators, too, will discover aspects of this bill in the coming days that they were simply unaware of when it came to a vote.
What is most troubling is how some of the Federal agencies will distribute the massive amounts of funding provided for in this bill. For instance, agencies will use funding in the House-passed bill for these endeavors: $30 million for salt marsh harvest mouse habitation restoration in the San Francisco bay; $8 to $10 million for oyster restoration in the Gulf of Mexico; $600 million for the acquisition of plug-in vehicles, which are not made or currently available in the United States. Sadly, the list goes on and on.
While these may be worthy endeavors, they certainly do not meet the test of being ``timely, targeted, and temporary.'' And they certainly do not belong in an economic stimulus bill.
I had hoped when this process began that the House and Senate would embark on a bold new experiment--building a bipartisan consensus--to reflect not only the tone set forth by the President, but to live up to the expectations of the American people.
Let's face it--my voters and your voters are sick and tired of the typical Washington finger pointing and want us to work together. The House leadership had a tremendous opportunity to use this legislation as a vehicle for bipartisanship. Much to my disappointment, the decision was made to forego bipartisanship in the name of expediency. I believe this expediency will prove costly over the long run.
As the House and Senate prepare to conference separate versions of the stimulus package, it is absolutely essential that House Members and Senators know exactly what is included in the final conference agreement.
It is for this reason that I am making this motion to instruct House conferees not to sign the final conference agreement unless the text of such agreement has been available to the conferees in an electronic, searchable, and downloadable form at least 48 hours prior to their approval.
If the House is about to cast its approval of the largest spending bill in history, the least we can do is to ensure that Members have 48 hours to review what is in it. That is not an unreasonable request. To the contrary, it is the reasonable and responsible thing to do.
While this motion limits public availability to conferees, I think any final agreement should, in practice, be available to the public in advance as well. Members have an obligation to their constituents to know the contents of the conference report before they cast their vote in what certainly will be one of the most important votes they will ever cast in this body. They should know--have a chance to know--what is in it. We ought not act in haste when spending almost $1 trillion of our taxpayers' money.
I urge Democrats and Republicans alike to join me in supporting this motion to instruct conferees and provide that 48 hours I mentioned.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes. Madam Speaker, we have often been accused of trying to push this bill rapidly through the Congress. In fact, we have been trying to push a recovery package through this Congress for the last 150 days.
We began this process in September when we tried to persuade the previous Bush administration of the necessity to support an economic recovery package. That White House would have none of it. Nonetheless, we put together a package--very modest in size compared to this one--
trying to look for anything that President Bush would sign, and that product was well known.
It has evolved gradually since that time as the economy has descended further and further and further into a recessionary and deflationary spiral. We now have had this legislation in both the House and the Senate appear on the Web.
Our committee, as soon as we produced the final product in the House, placed the bill on the Web. And the Senate placed the Nelson amendment, which is the amendment that they are now operating on, they placed it on the Web as well. So I think both Chambers have demonstrated that they are trying to do every bit that they can to provide transparency for the process.
I have no objection to what the language in this motion to instruct conferees says. I do have one caution: every day that we do not take action, an additional 20,000 Americans lose their jobs. And that is accelerating.
I don't intend to go anywhere. The Speaker has made it quite clear that this Congress is not going to go home for its Presidents Day recess until this package is finished. So we are scheduled to adjourn for that recess on Friday. But I have no problem sticking around for as long as it takes to get the job done.
I would point out that there's considerably less to this proposal than meets the eye because all it does is to require the text of the proposal to be available to the managers of the bill. And I suspect that the managers, who will be participating in these discussions, will know literally from moment to moment exactly what it is that they are doing.
{time} 1515
I am sure that each and every person appointed to be managers on both sides of the aisle will be reasonably competent so that they can do that. So I would simply point out the effectiveness is simply to delay consideration of this legislation when it does come back from conference. If that is what Members want to go on record as supporting, I have no objection whether this passes or not. I will be around as long as it takes; and, frankly, I expect it is going to take a whole lot longer than just this week.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I am proud to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.
(Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. BARTON of Texas. First, let me say I rise in support of the motion to instruct. But what I really want to talk about is President Obama's call for bipartisanship. We heard it last night in his press conference; we have heard it in every major speech that he has given. And, somehow, it is just the Republicans' fault that we are not being bipartisan. Well, I have had it up to here with the rhetoric. The reality is totally different.
We have before us a motion to go to conference in which not one Republican amendment was accepted on the House floor, in which there were no hearings in any of the committees in the House of Representatives, in which in the Energy and Commerce Committee of which I am the senior Republican we didn't have any hearings. We did have a markup. We got five Republican amendments accepted in the markup in committee, but three of those were stripped when the bill came to the floor. We are apparently going to have five House conferees out of 435 Members; we are going to have nobody from the Energy and Commerce Committee, nobody from the Education and Workforce Committee, nobody from the Ag Committee, nobody from Homeland Security, nobody from Veterans', nobody from Financial Services. The list goes on and on. That is not bipartisanship. I don't know what it is; but if President Obama is listening, if you really want to be bipartisan, pick up the phone and call the Speaker and say: allow the 41 percent of the House that represents the Republicans to be a part of the process. It is not bipartisan where we are presented a bill and told ``take it or leave it.''
Now, I understand that if one side has 59 percent and the other side has 41 percent, the 59 percent can win every vote; but that doesn't mean that the 41 percent has no say. And we have a bill somewhere between $820 billion and $850 billion, which is more than the entire economy of the country of Australia, which is 20 years of state spending of the State of Texas, which is equal to almost the entire discretionary budget of United States of America, and we are going to pass it after a floor debate 2 weeks ago of 3 to 4 hours, and I don't know how many hours of debate we are going to have today and tomorrow, but it is 3 or 4 hours. Now, that to me is shameful.
The regular appropriation process, which Mr. Obey is the chairman of, they have 12 subcommittees; they have hearings in every subcommittee; they have markup in every subcommittee. They take each bill to the full committee and have a markup. The bills, theoretically, come to the floor separately and under an open rule where any Member of the House can stand up and offer an amendment.
This process is a dictatorship. I could talk about the substance of the bill, but at least know, the American people, that the process that we are spending $800 billion to $900 billion is a closed system. I strongly oppose it.
Mr. OBEY. I yield myself 1 minute.
Madam Speaker, I yield myself this time to simply observe that my friend from Texas is wrong in one respect. The gentleman suggested that no Republican amendments were adopted on floor consideration of the bill. The Platts amendment was adopted; the Shuster amendment was adopted. The last time I looked, both of those gentlemen were Republicans.
I would also point out that in the committee consideration of the bill, more Republican amendments were adopted, much to my consternation, than were Democratic amendments. I would also point out, in our hearing in the full committee we did have a hearing on the need for an economic recovery package. When we held that hearing, I am sorry that only three members of the minority attended because the minority members were asked by the ranking member of the committee to boycott the hearing.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).
Ms. FOXX. Madam Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding me this time. I support his motion to instruct and think he has done a very fine job of explaining part of the problems that we have with this bill.
President Obama I understand had promised that, before he would sign any bill, it would be available to the American public for at least 5 days. We are only asking for 48 hours, and yet we are getting excuses after excuses for why this bill cannot be made available for 48 hours. We all remember the rush to fund Katrina, what a debacle that was. And I remember the old saying: act in haste and repent at leisure. We don't know what is in this bill, and we need to know.
Much has been made of the Senate action to cut spending in the bill, but it doesn't show the full picture, because in many ways the Senate bill will lead to an even bigger expansion of the Federal Government and long-term Federal spending than the House bill. If all the new programs proposed by the House and Senate make it into the conference report, we will have created 42 new government programs, programs that the taxpayers likely are now on the hook to continue funding in the future. The Senate bill did nothing to cut the number of existing Federal programs that were included in the House. In fact, the House and Senate combined to propose to expand 87 existing Federal programs, 82 billion from the Senate bill and 93 billion in the House bill. This is not funding for one-time stimulative programs, but will go on to expand these programs, forcing Congress to maintain most, if not all, of these higher funding levels. The public doesn't understand that.
The final stimulus package can include as many as 129 new and expanded Federal programs. And my colleague, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, failed to mention that, in terms of amendments that were accepted by the committees, that after three amendments were accepted by the full Appropriations Committee they were taken out in the Speaker's office when the bill was rewritten in the Speaker's office.
Mr. OBEY. I yield myself 30 seconds to simply again correct the gentlewoman. The fact is that the amendment that related to the process by which highway projects were funded and approved was not taken out in the Speaker's office; it was taken out on the House floor when, on a bipartisan basis, Republican and Democratic members of the T&I Committee wanted to see that changed.
I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Missouri (Mrs. Emerson), a member of the committee.
Mrs. EMERSON. Madam Speaker, first, I would like to say that I hope this bill can be vastly improved in the conference committee.
While much has been said about the Senate cuts, their version of the bill still costs $838 billion, which is a $20 billion increase over the House-passed bill of $819 billion.
Also, with regard to the Financial Services section of the recovery bill, and particularly since I am a new ranking member, I am disappointed that neither I nor the minority's committee staff were given an opportunity to consult with the majority members or staff before the bill was produced and unveiled on the Internet. I hope that this practice won't continue as this stimulus bill is negotiated with the Senate and as the committee begins its work for fiscal year 2010.
With regard to the motion to instruct before us, it simply asks that the House conferees not approve of the final conference agreement until the text of the legislation has been available in an electronic, searchable, and downloadable form for at least 48 hours prior to voting on the final agreement. I think this is a simple request, and it is a simple request that ensures American people have an opportunity to review the bill and contact their representatives regarding its content. I believe, and I think all of us believe, that our constituents have a right to see the bill before it is voted out of conference and it is no longer amendable.
Mr. OBEY. I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from the committee, Mr. Kirk of Illinois.
Mr. KIRK. Spending under this legislation totals over $800 billion, requiring the Bureau of the Debt, we project, to attempt to borrow $2.1 trillion to finance this legislation. And this legislation isn't the only big spending bill we will consider. Shortly, we will consider a
$410 billion omnibus appropriation reportedly containing 4,000 earmarks, followed by a $100 billion supplemental.
I was just at the Bureau of the Public Debt today watching the Federal Government go $32 billion in debt, one of three public auctions. We have an enormous requirement for borrowing money, five times more than in the history of the United States, totaling $76,000 per taxpayer if this legislation passes. We have seen other sovereign debt issues fail. Recently, the government of Germany failed to auction its debt because so much was being offered.
Under this legislation, and with other legislation that is pending on the omnibus and on the supplemental, the Bureau of the Debt will be forced to auction $150 billion per week of the United States going into debt. We have never seen so much debt auctioned before, and this is not coordinated with other governments. Other governments, like the Government of China, the Government of the United Kingdom, France all have their own stimulus packages going into debt $1.2 trillion themselves.
The question: With all of these governments borrowing over $3 trillion, who has the money to pay this? Now we know our kids are going to pay for this long term, but who is going to pay for this next week? And the answer is: maybe debt markets, maybe not.
We have never seen the United States go this far into debt this quickly. It took 40 Presidents, from President Washington to President Reagan, to build up $1 trillion in debt. The previous President doubled our debt to $6 trillion. But now, we are going $2.6 trillion more into debt in a month. In a month. Can we auction this much debt this quickly? It is a question that should be asked and answered before we pass this legislation.
Mr. OBEY. I yield myself 1 minute.
Madam Speaker, the last people in the world I will take lectures from on fiscal responsibility are those Members of this House who voted for the Bush economic programs that borrowed $1.2 trillion and then took us into a war which, before it is over, will cost us another at least $1.5 trillion.
Secondly, I would simply answer the gentleman's question when he asks who is going to pay. I would ask, who is going to pay if we do nothing and do not implement this package? I would submit the people who will pay will be every American who loses his or her job, every businessman who loses his ability to get credit because of the constriction of the economy; every student who will have to quit college because his family cannot afford to help him go.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. OBEY. I yield myself an additional 1 minute.
And every person who loses one-third to one-half the value of their 401(k)s because of the continuing unraveling of the economy.
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That is who will pay.
We need to stop the political rhetoric and recognize this problem is serious enough that we need to rise above our usual recitation of trivia and deal with the major problems facing this country. And we can't do that without taking action on this package.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, how much time do we have remaining?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from California has 17\1/2\ minutes remaining. The gentleman from Wisconsin has 23 minutes remaining.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana, our conference chairman, Michael Pence.
(Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. PENCE. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
I take a second chair to no one in this conference in my respect for the integrity of the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Mr. Obey is a man with whom I differ on a broad range of issues, but he is a man of integrity, Madam Speaker. And I come to this floor in part to acknowledge that.
Let me say also how much I appreciate that the chairman said that he has no objection to the motion to instruct conferees on H.R. 1 that is before the body today that would require that before the House shall record its final approval to the conference agreement that the text of the agreement should be made available to the managers in an electronic, searchable and downloadable form for at least 48 hours. I commend the chairman for that.
I would respectfully disagree with the statement that the chairman just made, Madam Speaker, and it's a statement that we heard the President of the United States make last night. And maybe it was inadvertent by the chairman, but it is this contrast that somehow this debate is between people that want to do something and people that want to do nothing. With great respect to the chairman, that is not an accurate articulation of the competing positions on this bill.
House Republicans know we are in a recession. This is a very serious time in the life of American families and in the life of our economy. At the President's invitation, House Republicans brought forward a series of proposals that would bring fast-acting tax relief to working families, small businesses and family farms. And despite President Obama's laudable call for bipartisanship, those House Republican proposals were completely excluded from this bill. And so to hear last night on national television and to hear today that there are those of us in the body that would do nothing, I would say respectfully to my Democratic colleagues and to this administration, who are you talking about? I know of no Republican in the House or the Senate who believes in these challenging economic times that we should do nothing. House Republicans believe simply that we should do the right thing. And millions of Americans stand with us that this massive spending bill that is nothing more than a tired wish list of leftover liberal spending priorities is not the answer. But we simply believe that we can do better. And by requiring that this legislation be on the Internet for 48 hours before final vote, we believe we're going to have a better opportunity to get the American people even more into that conversation than they are today.
I still believe that we can achieve a bipartisan result. I believe in the goodwill of the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. And I believe in his integrity. I believe in the goodwill of a great number of my colleagues on the Democrat side of the aisle. And I believe our President is sincere in saying that in these difficult economic times, we ought to be coming together and bringing the best ideas from both sides of the aisle to confront this very serious recession. But let's bring the American people into this debate. Let's pass this motion and ensure that this bill is open to the public for 48 hours. And we will hear what they have to say.
Mr. OBEY. I yield myself 1 minute.
Let me simply say in response to the gentleman's comments, that indeed I believe that Republican ideas have been included. I have had dozens of conversations with members of the minority side of the aisle who would talk to me about this item or that item that they thought either ought to be in or be out of the package. And we've responded in numerous instances. I would also point out that the President himself has pointed out that when he first talked to Republican leadership about what ought to be in this package, they told him there ought to be a healthy dollop of tax cuts in the package, and that when he produced the package, which did contain significant tax cuts, a number of Republicans then indicated that they were, in fact, pleasantly surprised by the fact that the President had done that.
Apparently, however, since then, they have decided to move the goalpost. The President can't do much about that. And I can't do much about that. I suspect that the people moving the goalposts are the people who might consider moving it back again.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, it is my honor to yield 1 minute to the whip on the Republican side of the aisle, Mr. Cantor.
Mr. CANTOR. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
And let me respond to the last statement from my colleague on the other side of the aisle, Mr. Obey, that that is not the way things happen. We were invited to the White House because the President felt it appropriate to reach out to us to take into consideration our proposals. We submitted to him in person a Republican economic recovery plan. Yes, it was more weighted for tax relief. Yes, it was, in a reduced way, a spending formula, because at the end of the day what any stimulus bill should be about is preserving, protecting and creating jobs, period. And as the President said last night, there is a lot in this bill that people may like. But do you know what? He also said the plan is not perfect because it was produced in Washington. This President came to this town and was elected because he said he was going to deliver on change.
Madam Speaker, I would say if we are serious about a true stimulus bill, let's get down to business. Let's provide small business tax relief because they create 70 percent of the jobs in this country. Let's not embark on a spending spree that is the biggest spending spree in the history of this country.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).
Mr. GOHMERT. Madam Speaker, the saying everybody in here already knows is that ``if you find yourself in a hole, it's time to stop digging.'' And there was far too much deficit spending for far too long.
This bill, clearly, with all its lack of transparency, is not about jobs. If it were just about jobs, then we could have the proposals by the Energy Committee and the Republicans in the Natural Resources Committee with some of the Blue Dogs, we could open up Alaska to oil and gas exploration where it has not been, open up the OCS, and we would get 3 million jobs without taking the future away from our children.
Now, the American people intuitively know this is not a good thing. Even though there is so much that is not transparent, they are not allowed to see it because of the opposition to the former chairman's motion here. But they know. The Dow knows. I just saw we are down 380 points even with this bill having passed the Senate and being brought in here now. People understand this is not a good thing. If it's something you're proud of, then go along with the motion to instruct and let the American people see this product you apparently are so proud of that is going to just auction off our children's future.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Broun).
Mr. BROUN of Georgia. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Speaker Pelosi, as well as President Obama, talked about wanting to have a new era of openness and transparency. And that is exactly what this motion to instruct is all about. It is to bring openness and transparency of this huge bill to the American public.
And I can't understand why my Democrat colleagues seem to be so bent on getting this bill to the floor and passed, because we don't even know what all is in there. I understand that the $600 million that were originally slated in the House bill to prepare America for socialized medicine has been expanded to $2 billion. And the American public has the possibility of having their health care decisions made by some health care czar and some bureaucracy here in the Federal Government, not by their doctor. And in fact, their doctor may be even chosen by this health care czar.
This is not right. This is not transparency. This is not fairness. The American people deserve better than this. So I encourage my Democratic colleagues to look at this motion to instruct and to support it so that the American people can see what is in this bill. We can come back next week or some time or even through the weekend. We can put it online today. And we can vote on it on Friday evening or Thursday evening if you will just do that. So I encourage my Democratic colleagues to support this motion to instruct so that we can have the transparency that the American public deserves.
Mr. OBEY. I yield myself 1 minute.
Madam Speaker, I hope that the Thursday or Friday that the gentleman is talking about, I hope he recognizes that it's likely to be next Thursday or Friday, not this one. Secondly, I must say I am amused when I hear the reference to ``socialized medicine.'' Does anybody really believe that it's socialized medicine if we are putting $2 billion in this legislation in order to help change our medical records from paper records to computerized records so we can reduce the number of mistakes that are made in hospitals and create more efficiency and save money in the health care area? With the rising costs of health care nationwide, shouldn't we be looking for ways to make the system more efficient to save money? That is what that $2 billion does, despite somebody's desire to look for ghosts.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Wittman).
Mr. WITTMAN. Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the ranking member for the opportunity to speak. And I do stand in favor of the motion to instruct requiring 48 hours for the information on this bill to be made available electronically in a readable, researchable and downloadable database. I think that is important to the American people.
And I want to stress that we have heard a lot of talk about what people stand for. I haven't heard anyone that says that we shouldn't be doing something. We absolutely need to be taking issue with where the American economy is today, to be making sure that we are working as hard as we can to provide solutions. There are American families out there that are hurting each and every day. I don't think any of us up here don't have that first and foremost on our mind.
Madam Speaker, it's not only important that we do something, but it's important that we do the right thing. This is such a monumental step for this government to take. It has been said that this is an historic precedent on the level of spending that we are taking to drive the economy. It really begs us to take the time to get it right. We need to take the time to focus on the right mix of tax cuts and spending that will truly stimulate the economy, dollars that make their way into the economy immediately. Over 60 percent of this bill doesn't make its way into the economy for more than 19 months. I don't know that anybody here would say that that is truly stimulative to the economy and things that are going to equate to jobs in a timely manner for folks that are suffering right now.
I think it's important to make sure that all the American people are heard on this. This is so important. There are members on this side that represent folks out there that want to make sure that ideas we hear from them are projected in this bill and they make their way into the final version that is to be considered here coming out of the conference report. I think that is incumbent upon this body to make sure that that happens. This bill is too important to make sure that we have the participation of everybody. We need to make sure that this information is available for the American public to understand, for their comments to come back to us, for us to have the opportunity to make sure that those comments make their way into this legislation. This is groundbreaking legislation, and it needs to happen now.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy).
Mr. McCARTHY of California. Well, I thank my fellow congressman from California (Mr. Lewis) for the fine work he does for all Americans.
I rise today in support of the motion to instruct conferees on H.R. 1. I would argue that it should be retitled. It should be titled
``People Before Politics.'' All it is asking is 48 hours to see the example of more than 800 pages spending more than $800 billion. It is roughly $1 billion a page. I think the American public has a right to know what is in the bill and what it is being spent on.
When I was watching television today and watching one of the interviews by one of our fellow Senators, one that helped negotiate where this bill currently was, when asked a question, he said, I only agreed to $780 billion. But the score today says $838 billion. When they asked him a question about what has gone in and what has been put in about health care, he said, I never agreed to that. So even the Senators themselves that have been negotiating this bill before it goes into conference are questioning what is in it. I think the American public has a right to know.
I would tell you that a little more than a week ago we sat on this floor and we had an debate about this bill. And unfortunately, there was a partisan vote and then a bipartisan vote about this bill. One side of the aisle almost all voted ``yes.'' That bipartisan vote was a handful of Democrats and Republicans who said ``no.'' And I think their voice has a right to be heard. And their voice of saying ``no'' is not
``let's not do anything.'' We believe there is an ability to do something better. And on this side of the aisle, the Republicans have sat together, worked in a bipartisan group and worked together also in a working group and laid out to this President and have given him the ideas that said how can we improve, how can we move together in moving forward? And what we are saying with the motion to instruct is let's continue the work, let's improve it and let's make the American people be first and foremost. Let's put people before politics.
{time} 1545
Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
(Mr. RANGEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. RANGEL. Madam Speaker, there may be a lot of people that have objection to the process in which we have moved forward, but one thing is abundantly clear and that is, the President of the United States, and every economist from the left to the right, believes that if we don't do something and do it fast, that our economy would be in far worse shape than we find it today.
To think the number of people that are losing their jobs, losing their health insurance, losing their families and losing their hope are things that are not labeled Republican and Democrats. This is what the core of America is all about.
I cannot think of anything that's more American, even the American flag, than our middle class citizens, our middle class taxpayers. Whether we've been involved in war, whether we've been involved in depressions, it's been the guts of these people that's been able, with pride, with dignity, to be able to come back stronger than ever. And now we find that their demands have increased, but at the same time, their resources have decreased. These are people that work hard every day; that have families with kids in school, that want to protect their health. And the one thing they can't do is purchase.
I don't understand this word that you have to build the confidence of people in the market. But one thing is that if you're the working poor,
$500 or $1,000 in the family, that's not confidence, that's filling a gap, that's filling a need. And it seems like it makes so much sense, no matter what town or village that you live in. If people can't afford to buy, if they can't afford to buy from the small businesses in their towns and villages, then these people have inventory that has built up, but they also have staff and clerks and employees that they can't afford to hire. Once these people are discharged, fired, laid off and go right back into the general economy, these are the middle class people. They're not the rich. They're not the poor, they're not the homeless, but there are people that believe that this country will never let them down.
And so the President says that 95 percent of people who work hard every day would be receiving some type of a tax cut. It would seem to me that, whatever objections you have, that time is not our friend. We find more small businesses closing, more people going into unemployment, losing their benefits for health. And in this bill we try to ease the pain, to try to stop the hemorrhage that we have from job loss, to try to make certain that someone who wants to buy would believe that they can keep their kid in school, that they will be able to have a job the next day and they don't have to hold back.
I'm hoping that we try to break this partisan past that we have, because I don't see how anyone can explain to anyone that's in trouble as to what their party label would be.
Our country is involved in an intensive care unit, and it seems to me that they're saying that we need an infusion of resources, an infusion of health care, an infusion of economic assistance. If we don't help this patient, our great Nation, then most every economist has said that she could come to near death. And every day we hold back this care, every day we hold back this injection of having funds, whether it's the earned income tax credit that allows people to work, even though they may be below poverty, they still are able to work and have their dignity, to be able to have children that are deductible where we can receive an additional two or $3,000 a year. It may not be much to people who are in the upper income, but to the people who have to count their salaries each and every week to see whether or not they can put food on the table, clothing on their children's back, or to be able to fulfill that dream, once the dream that Americans have, that they will not be able to succeed, to me, that's even more important than the economic loss that they would have.
To believe that in this great Nation of ours, no matter what the economic setbacks will be, that we can and we will recover, we've done it before, during bad times. We've come back after World War II stronger than ever. And I think this President, this new President has given hope to people, not only throughout our towns and villages, not only throughout the United States of America, but indeed throughout the world.
I don't see how any Democrat, having a Republican President, could not say during this time for our Nation that we'll put our party labels behind, we'll work together and try to save the economy of this great country. Now's the time, I really think, if you're talking about bipartisanship, that this is the time to see whether or not we can work together because this word ``confidence'' means not Democrats and not Republicans, but Americans working hard together.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I hate to inquire again, but I really need to know if I have enough time for my colleague.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) has 6 minutes remaining. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) has 16 minutes remaining.
Mr. LEWIS of California. In that event, Madam Speaker, I am happy to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston).
Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I certainly agree with the previous speaker that we do need to have bipartisan cooperation on this. And of course, we got off on the wrong foot. This bill was passed in the House without having the beauty of subcommittee hearings. There was one general hearing back in December, before many of the Members who voted on it were even sworn in to be a Member of Congress. So I think we could go back and this week, maybe in a conference committee, open it up and allow some of the amendments that were left out of the Senate or the House side to be included in it, and maybe we could work in a bipartisan fashion.
This bill, as it is now, is more expensive as it comes out of the Senate than it was by the House, which had a bipartisan vote against it. There was a partisan vote for it, but a bipartisan vote against it.
Only 7 percent of the spending in the bill goes to public works projects. That's $57 billion out of $838 billion. And only 22 percent of the money could actually be spent this year. So much for urgency and shovel-ready projects.
The Senate bill actually increases spending $19 billion over the House bill, which, on a bipartisan basis, so many of us voted against. It creates all kinds of new programs, 32 new programs. Now, some of them were being stripped out by the Senate that the House put in there. That was good. But I just found out about a new $100 million program to get new lunchroom equipment into schools. Now, maybe that's a good idea, but why can't that be done where it's always been done, on a local level? $100 million so that schools can buy new lunchroom equipment.
There's also funding in there for the Department of Energy that actually doubles their annual appropriation, in a stimulus package. There's even a grant in there to study privatization on American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. What is that about? Have you read that language? I don't think anybody has. It's very peculiar. How did that get in there?
And you know, this bill the President brags about has no earmarks, let's be serious. It has $200 billion worth of earmarks, but they will be made by State and local authorities. It won't be made by the Congress. At least when the U.S. Congress does earmarks it gets posted on the Web page and people can find out who requests it. But no, we're going to have phantom, ghost earmarks to the tune of $200 billion.
Madam Speaker, the Republican alternative to this bill creates more jobs at a lower price tag. The Republican bill, through tax credits to small business, creates about six million jobs, and that's from the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan analyst of this. The price of the Republican one is about $400 billion.
We stand ready to work with the President and work with the Democrats on a good, bipartisan package because we think doing something is the right move. But this package deserves a ``no.''
Mr. OBEY. Has the gentleman from California yielded back his time?
Mr. LEWIS of California. I have not. I have no additional speakers, however and it's my intention to inquire of the chairman if he's got three or four speakers.
Mr. OBEY. Just one.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Okay, then I would yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. OBEY. How much time do I have remaining?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Wisconsin has 16 minutes.
Mr. OBEY. I yield myself 5 minutes.
Madam Speaker, this bill is more than 150 days late. And every day that we delay, if you take a look at what's happening in the economy, an additional 20,000 people are losing their jobs.
So we've had plenty of time to talk about our philosophical differences. We've had plenty of time to talk about our different views of the viability of the market. We've had plenty of time to talk about our views of the role of government.
But people back home are not interested in our theoretical or our philosophical views. They're interested in whether or not we have a clue about what is happening on Main Street America, what is happening in businesses all over this country, what is happening when metal working companies and paper mills and dozens of other businesses lay off workers every day, every hour. And they want to know whether we can end the speechifying long enough to actually do something that will help them. That's what this is about.
So we can argue about one-tenth of 1 percent of this bill, whether we like it or not. The fact is that some of the same people who were only too willing to vote for $1.2 trillion worth of tax cuts paid for with borrowed money under President Bush, the same people who were willing to allow us to go to war and spend over $1 trillion in a war that will plague us for years, these are the same people who supported economic policies that, essentially, resulted in the average working family having flat wages for the last 8 years. These same people are now telling us, ``Oh, don't do this. We've got a better idea.''
Well, we've tried those ideas for 8 years, and what has been the result? The result has been that, for the last 8 years, over 94 percent of the economic growth in this country, over 94 percent of the economic growth of this country went into the pockets of the wealthiest 10 percent of American families. And so, the other 90 percent were struggling to get table scraps.
And how did they respond? They responded by borrowing. They borrowed more for their houses. They borrowed more to send their kids to college. They borrowed more to pay for health care and a lot of other things. And then, the housing bubble and the Wall Street bubble burst and they got hit with the results. And so, now they are suffering for the bubbles that we've had in the economy the past 8 years. And they're looking for somebody to recognize what's happened to them and looking for somebody who will help to actually do something about the fact that they're losing their health care, losing their homes, losing their jobs, losing their ability to send the kids to college, and losing hope.
This package, by itself, will not solve any of those problems. All it will do, if we can finally produce it, all it will do is to minimize the damage and to try to inject an additional source of consumer spending in the economy, in hopes that we can begin the process of eventually turning this economy around. That's what this is all about.
We've had our time for debates. It's been a long time now, over 150 days, as I said. The time to move is now.
General Leave
Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the motions on H.R. 1 considered today.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from Wisconsin?
There was no objection.
Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
{time} 1600
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the previous question is ordered on the motion to instruct.
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion to instruct offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis).
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that the noes appeared to have it.
Mr. LEWIS of California. Madam Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, this 15-minute vote on the motion to instruct will be followed by 5-minute votes on motions to suspend the rules with regard to House Resolution 114, if ordered, and House Resolution 60, if ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 403, nays 0, not voting 29, as follows:
YEAS--403
AbercrombieAckermanAderholtAdler (NJ)AkinAlexanderAltmireAndrewsArcuriAustriaBacaBachmannBachusBairdBaldwinBarrett (SC)BarrowBartlettBarton (TX)BeanBecerraBermanBerryBiggertBilirakisBishop (GA)Bishop (NY)Bishop (UT)BlackburnBlumenauerBluntBoccieriBoehnerBonnerBono MackBoozmanBorenBoswellBoucherBoustanyBrady (PA)Brady (TX)Braley (IA)BrightBroun (GA)Brown (SC)Brown-Waite, GinnyBuchananBurgessBurton (IN)ButterfieldBuyerCalvertCampCantorCaoCapitoCappsCapuanoCardozaCarnahanCarneyCarson (IN)CarterCassidyCastleChaffetzChandlerChildersClarkeClayCleaverClyburnCobleCoffman (CO)CohenColeConawayConnolly (VA)ConyersCooperCostaCostelloCourtneyCrenshawCrowleyCuellarCulbersonCummingsDahlkemperDavis (AL)Davis (CA)Davis (KY)Davis (TN)Deal (GA)DeFazioDelahuntDeLauroDentDiaz-Balart, L.Diaz-Balart, M.DicksDingellDoggettDonnelly (IN)DoyleDreierDriehausDuncanEdwards (MD)Edwards (TX)EhlersEllisonEllsworthEmersonEngelEshooEtheridgeFallinFarrFattahFilnerFlakeFlemingForbesFortenberryFosterFoxxFrank (MA)Franks (AZ)FrelinghuysenFudgeGarrett (NJ)GerlachGiffordsGingrey (GA)GohmertGonzalezGoodlatteGordon (TN)GravesGreen, AlGreen, GeneGriffithGrijalvaGuthrieGutierrezHall (NY)Hall (TX)HalvorsonHareHarperHastings (FL)Hastings (WA)HeinrichHellerHensarlingHergerHerseth SandlinHigginsHillHimesHinojosaHironoHodesHoekstraHoldenHoltHondaHoyerHunterInglisInsleeIsraelIssaJackson (IL)Jackson-Lee (TX)JenkinsJohnson (GA)Johnson, E. B.Johnson, SamJonesJordan (OH)KagenKanjorskiKapturKennedyKildeeKilpatrick (MI)KilroyKing (IA)King (NY)KingstonKirkKirkpatrick (AZ)KissellKline (MN)KratovilKucinichLambornLanceLangevinLarsen (WA)Larson (CT)LathamLaTouretteLattaLee (CA)Lee (NY)LevinLewis (CA)Lewis (GA)LinderLipinskiLoBiondoLoebsackLofgren, ZoeLoweyLucasLuetkemeyerLujanLummisLungren, Daniel E.LynchMackMaffeiMaloneyManzulloMarchantMarkey (CO)Markey (MA)MarshallMassaMathesonMatsuiMcCarthy (CA)McCarthy (NY)McCaulMcClintockMcCollumMcCotterMcDermottMcGovernMcHenryMcHughMcIntyreMcKeonMcMahonMcMorris RodgersMcNerneyMeeks (NY)MelanconMicaMichaudMiller (FL)Miller (MI)Miller (NC)Miller, GeorgeMinnickMitchellMollohanMoore (KS)Moore (WI)Moran (KS)Moran (VA)Murphy (CT)Murphy, PatrickMurphy, TimMurthaMyrickNadler (NY)NapolitanoNeal (MA)NeugebauerNunesNyeOberstarObeyOlsonOlverOrtizPallonePascrellPastor (AZ) PaulPaulsenPaynePencePerlmutterPerrielloPetersPetersonPetriPingree (ME)PittsPlattsPoe (TX)Polis (CO)PomeroyPoseyPrice (GA)Price (NC)RadanovichRahallRangelRehbergReichertReyesRichardsonRodriguezRoe (TN)Rogers (AL)Rogers (KY)Rogers (MI)RohrabacherRooneyRos-LehtinenRoskamRossRothman (NJ)Roybal-AllardRoyceRuppersbergerRyan (OH)Ryan (WI)SalazarSanchez, Linda T.Sanchez, LorettaSarbanesScaliseSchakowskySchauerSchiffSchmidtSchraderSchwartzScott (GA)Scott (VA)SensenbrennerSerranoSestakShadeggShea-PorterShermanShimkusShulerShusterSimpsonSiresSkeltonSlaughterSmith (NE)Smith (NJ)Smith (TX)Smith (WA)SnyderSolis (CA)SpaceSpeierSprattStearnsStupakSullivanSuttonTannerTauscherTaylorTeagueTerryThompson (CA)Thompson (MS)Thompson (PA)ThornberryTiahrtTierneyTitusTonkoTownsTsongasTurnerUptonVan HollenVelazquezViscloskyWaldenWalzWampWatersWatsonWattWaxmanWeinerWelchWestmorelandWhitfieldWilson (OH)Wilson (SC)WittmanWolfWuYarmuthYoung (AK)Young (FL)
NOT VOTING--29
BerkleyBilbrayBoydBrown, CorrineCampbellCastor (FL)Davis (IL)DeGetteGalleglyGrangerGraysonHarmanHincheyJohnson (IL)KindKlein (FL)KosmasMeek (FL)Miller, GaryPutnamRushSchockSessionsSouderStarkTiberiWasserman SchultzWexlerWoolsey
{time} 1630
Ms. LINDA T. SANCHEZ of California and Mr. PAUL changed their vote from ``nay'' to ``yea.''
So the motion to instruct was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
____________________
