By Congressman Michael McCaul
Published: 02-12-09
President Obama promised a bipartisan effort to create an economic stimulus package to turn our economy around. However Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Harry Reid failed to deliver. When the bill comes out of a House-Senate Conference Committee today or tomorrow I expect it will be a re-run that no conservative policymaker wants to see again.
The so-called stimulus presented to us is no stimulus at all. In fact what we will see is a $1 trillion Trojan Horse containing billions of dollars of pork spending. The Democrat leadership should be ashamed of going on a spending spree with taxpayer dollars in the name of making emergency repairs to our economy and putting Americans back to work.
We cannot spend our way out of debt. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says that long-term this will cause more harm than good. Yet Democrats are intent to spend the equivalent of a million dollars a day for the next three thousand years.
The stimulus bill should be about creating jobs. Nothing more. We can do this with long-term meaningful tax cuts. The presidents own economic advisors say the Republican plan will create twice the jobs for half the cost. I invite you to click the following link to read a synopsis of the plan which I co-sponsored:
http://www.house.gov/list/press/tx10_mccaul/2_5_2009.html.
At a critical moment in Americas history when our nation desperately needs strong principled leadership Democrat leaders are bent on taking advantage of this crisis and manipulating the fears of American taxpayers to their own ends. Instead of creating jobs theyre focused on pushing through massive overreaches of government.
It goes beyond multi-million dollar water parks and $300 million to purchase so-called green" golf carts. Whats supposed to be a job creator and nothing else makes landmark changes to social policy.
One measure seeks to take limits off of Welfare spending that President Clinton imposed 12 years ago. A Wall Street Journal op-ed co-authored by University of Texas professor and former assistant Health and Human Services Secretary Benjamin Sasse explains that Through a little noticed provision of the stimulus package that has passed the House of Representatives the bill creates a fund for TANF that is open-ended -- the same way Medicare and Social Security are." The provision would essentially remove the five year limit on federal benefits and jeopardize the requirement that recipients begin working after two years of government support.
The hard working people in my district and across Texas are also hurting from this economy. But the plan before us will only create a deeper hole for them to climb out of.
