From Congresswoman Kay Granger
Indiana Senator Evan Bayh announced this week he was retiring from Congress. The two-term Democrat had this to say about his entry into the private sector:
If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months."
I could not agree more.
Today is the one-year anniversary of the $787 billion so-called stimulus" package which was intended to spur job growth and economic development. After nearly $1 trillion of government spending most of us have not seen improvement in our day-to-day lives. What we have seen is government waste at its worst and an unmanageable national debt.
When the Administration rolled out the package last January the price tag was a staggering $787 billion. Now the Congressional Budget Office says it will cost taxpayers $862 billion nearly $100 billion over what we were all told. Even worse the government has spent your money on projects that have made us all cringe like a new skateboard park in Rhode Island new furniture for government agencies bike racks in Washington DC and ginseng farming in West Virginia.
And after all that spending unemployment rates are still sky high with the economy shedding 20000 jobs in January alone. In fact Texas had 1.6 percent fewer jobs in December 2009 than we did in February 2009. This has only led to more Congressional calls for another stimulus package. Only this time they will call it a jobs bill."
Stimulus-style spending has not created jobs but it has certainly grown our national debt over the last year. I have voted against increasing our debt limit twice in the last few months. If not brought under control the debt alone could push the economy back into recession. Enough is enough. Lets make this next year a time when we cut spending taxes and resuscitate our economy through common sense and reform and not through deficits debt and political spin.
