Fiscal and Economic
More on Fiscal and Economic
Tough Love for California. House Chamber, Washington, D.C. June 11, 2009 M. Speaker: Gov. Schwarzenegger of my home state of California has called for the federal government to underwrite as much as $15 billion of Revenue Anticipation Notes that the state has to issue to avoid insolvency.
I think that would be a colossal mistake, and that such an act would not only dig the nation deeper into the hole it is in, but would actually make California’s fiscal condition worse.
By Tom McClintock Winston Churchill once said, “Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities.” California’s leaders are now putting that maxim to the ultimate test.
A generation ago, California government spent about half what it does today after adjusting for both inflation and population growth. Yet it boasted the finest public services in the nation, including a free university education for every Californian who wanted one.
By Tom McClintock A generation ago, California exemplified its nickname, “The Golden State.” State spending was less than half per capita, inflation adjusted, what it is today. Its debt-service ration was less than a third. Yet Californians enjoyed one of the finest highway systems in the world and one of the finest public educations systems in the country. Water and electricity were so cheap that many communities didn’t bother to meter consumption.
April 21, 2009. Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Granite Bay) today introduced legislation that allows banks to immediately pay back Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds to the U.S. Treasury. Banks which were pressured to accept TARP funding are now facing serious obstacles, uncertainty and continued government control in their efforts to return the funds to taxpayers.
“It is a travesty that banks seeking to repay taxpayer money should be prohibited from doing so after taxpayers were promised that repayment would be made as soon as humanly possible,” McClintock said.
House Chamber, Washington D.C. April 21, 2009. Mr. Speaker: Many Americans have been shocked in recent days to learn that banks seeking to repay TARP money have been told the treasury will not allow them to do so.
Taxpayers were promised that this money was only to be used to buy up toxic assets and that it would be repaid to the treasury as soon as humanly possible.
And yet, when several banks have attempted to do precisely that, they’ve been told that the treasury will not allow them to do so.
Sacramento, California. April 15, 2009. Let the word go forth today from gatherings like this across the nation that the silent majority is no longer silent. We are stirring. We are awakening. We are many. And we are Americans – the latest generation of Americans who have been called upon to defend our liberties and the constitutional principles of limited government that protect our freedom.
House Chamber, Washington, D.C. April 2, 2009 Mme. Chairman: I feel one of those rare bi-partisan moments coming on. Throughout these budget debates, my friends on the Left keep saying that our problems are rooted in the fiscal mismanagement of the Bush Administration. The Gentleman from Virginia just presented a chart titled, “Record Deterioration of the Budget Under the Republican Administration.”
I agree. There’s no denying it. George W. Bush increased spending twice as fast as Bill Clinton. He turned a budget surplus into a chronic deficit.
House Chamber, Washington, D.C. April 1, 2009 Mr. Speaker: The American people are awakening to a danger of a budget that spends too much and borrows too much and taxes too much, because they know what that means.
They know that you can’t spend your way rich.
They know that you can’t borrow your way out of debt.
And they know that you can’t tax your way to prosperity.
No nation in the world has ever spent, borrowed and taxed its way to economic health. Many nations have spent, borrowed and taxed their way to economic ruin and bankruptcy.
By Tom McClintock On June 28, 1991, the California Assembly began debate on what was then the biggest tax increase in California’s history: a $7 billion tax hike pushed by Gov. Pete Wilson that included increases in sales, income and car taxes.