House Chamber, Washington, D.C., January 27, 2009.  Mr. Chairman:

With this measure, the new administration seems bound and determined to continue the failed policy of the past administration.  This proves what I like to call “McClintock’s Second Law of Political Physics,” which is, the more we spend on our mistakes, the less willing we are to admit them.

This policy has failed everywhere and every time it has been tried for a simple reason: government cannot INJECT a dollar INTO the economy that it first has not taken OUT of the economy.

 If I take a dollar from Peter and give it to Paul, it’s true that Paul now has an extra dollar to spend.  And when he spends it, that dollar will ripple through the economy.

 But Peter now has one less dollar to spend in that same economy.  In short, it nets to zero.

 In fact, it nets to less than zero, because we are shifting enormous amounts of capital away from investments based on economic calculations and in favor of investments based on political ones.