Newsroom

House Chambers, Washington D.C.
February 25, 2009

M. Speaker:

When it was announced that Randolph Churchill had been hospitalized to remove a benign tumor, a parliamentary wag commented, “What a pity it is to remove the only part of Randolph that isn’t malignant.”

As I look at this bill, I can only remark what a pity it is to remove the only part of the nation’s education system that actually works.

House Chamber, Washington, D.C.
February 12, 2009

M. Speaker:

I rise again to urge the majority to consider very carefully the damage they are doing to our nation’s economy by passing this unprecedented spending measure.

There is still time to heed the warnings from economists across the nation that this bill will do long-term damage to the growth of our nation’s economy for many years to come.

This is not mere economic theory: it is the consistent effect every time and everywhere that governments have tried to spend their way to prosperity.

House Chamber, Washington D.C.
February 10, 2009

M. Speaker:

Benjamin Franklin warned us that “Passion governs, but she never governs wisely.”

As the Congress and the President rush to enact the latest in a long line of mega-spending bills, I think we would be well advised to spend a little more time on the dispassionate math of the matter.

House Chamber, Washington, D.C.
February 4, 2009

M. Speaker:

The mantra we hear from the Left is that government – rather than the productive sector – needs to create new jobs. According to our new President, the $825 billion spending bill will create 3 million new jobs.

That sounded pretty good to me at a time when our economy is hurting so badly, until I pulled out a pocket calculator and did the math. Three million new jobs for $825 billion. Ladies and Gentlemen, that comes to $275,000 per job!

M. Speaker:

I saw S-CHIP implemented in California, and I can tell you that it’s a prime example of the law of unintended consequences. Since its inception, we’ve watched as S-CHIP has been slowly replacing employer health plans with government-paid health plans – with spiraling costs to taxpayers. Employers discovered that they could avoid their own plans, knowing that their employees would be covered by S-CHIP.

M. Speaker:

When we speak of running up a $2 trillion debt to pay for this year of unprecedented spending, where does that money come from?

We don’t have it, and so we borrow it.

Where do we borrow it from? We will borrow that $2 trillion from the same pool of funds that would otherwise have been available for businesses seeking to add jobs, or homebuyers seeking to buy homes or consumers seeking to buy new cars or appliances.

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.