Hutchison's Statement on Stimulus

U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Texas’ senior Senator, today spoke on the floor of the Senate in opposition to the economic stimulus bill.  Below are excerpts of her floor speech:

“First of all, the bill was written without any Republican input. It was written in the House of Representatives by the Democrats. There were no amendments allowed. The committees were not allowed to exercise their jurisdiction on the bill there. It came to the Senate. I was on the Appropriations Committee which passed the spending part of the bill. Amendments were discouraged. The meeting lasted a couple of hours. The same thing happened on the Finance Committee, which was the tax part of the bill, and there were no amendments that were able to be hammered out. There was not an amendment process where we gave and took. And to say that Republicans had a chance to have input is really disingenuous. I do respect the President of the United States for coming and talking to Republicans. He talked to the Republican Senators. He talked to the Republican House members.

“With interest, the cost of this bill is going to be a trillion dollars. Now, people say, ‘It's a spending bill.  What did you expect?’ A spending bill? I still take a trillion dollars of taxpayer money, borrowing from the future very seriously. I think we ought to spend some time before we spend $1 trillion in a bill that is going to be off the budget, that is not in any projected budget that we have seen. It is going to add $1 trillion to the deficit.

“…the Congressional Budget Office, which is a nonpartisan arm of Congress that is supposed to give us facts without political bias, has said that most of the money in this bill is going to be spent in years three through ten.  Well, a stimulus bill should inject into the economy an energy that will cause jobs to be either produced or kept, that will produce spending so that there will be something for people to make and for retailers to sell, and after we have that stimulus, which we hope would be in the private sector, and therefore permanent, then we're going to have to deal with the deficit in years three through ten so that we don't get into an upside-down situation where we have so much debt that either our foreign investors will not buy our debt or, if they do, the risk is so good that they increase the interest rate.

“I believe that tax relief has been proven again and again to spur the economy. President Kennedy gave tax relief and it spurred the economy and increased revenue. President Reagan -- tax relief, it introduced revenue. President Bush, 2001, when we were having a rough time in our economy, the first tax cuts, it turned the stock market around and it gave us the largest increase in revenue in the history of America.

“I’m for stimulus. We all know we need stimulus. I would like tax cuts that would spur spending, not tax cuts that would be driveled out in such small amounts that no one would feel they could go out and buy something.

“How about spending on infrastructure? How about more than 17% of a $1 trillion going for infrastructure that would be jobs today for people building bridges, building highways, building things that would be clearly job creation? I had an amendment, which never made it to the floor, that said that military construction should be moved up from the Department of Defense five-year plan to three years. Military construction is money that we know we're going to spend.

“The Department of Defense has a five-year plan. They know exactly what their priorities are. We normally take it one year at a time. Why not take the five-year plan and bring it up and do it in two or three years because we know it would be American jobs? We know it is money that we're going to spend anyway. It would be stimulative, and it would be the right kind of spending.

“Instead, the conference cut the military spending in this bill from what passed in the Senate. The conference cut our military spending for hospitals and for Veterans Administration hospitals to increase the quality and access to health care for our veterans. Mr. President, what kind of priority is that? And they're increasing spending to save a mouse in San Francisco that might be endangered. Mr. President, this is not a package that we can be proud to give to the American people and say, it's worth tightening our belts to do this because it will make a difference.

“…Mr. President, this is not the right bill for the American people, and I urge my colleagues to please consider their positions and let us do this right: Tax cuts to spur spending, tax cuts to spur the opportunity for corporations and businesses to hire people, spending on infrastructure, more in military construction, not less. That would be a bill that we could support, Mr. President.”