October 30, 2009
This week in Washington, I took to the House floor to speak against the out-of-control spending, the debt, and the deficits Congress is imposing on East Texas taxpayers in the form of a major spending bill that that contained a 17% increase over last year’s spending level.
I assure you the family budget that has to pay for this federal budget hasn’t increased 17% over last year. People want to know, “why is federal spending out of control?” It is simple – this Congress and President Obama are incapable of doing what the rest of America does when times get tough, stop spending.
Already they have passed a $1.1 trillion government stimulus plan, which by the way, since it passed, over three and a half million of our fellow countrymen have lost their jobs. We have the highest unemployment rate in our nation in a generation. That stimulus plan weighed in at $9,745 per household. I would suggest the American people didn’t get their money’s worth.
Next, they passed and signed into law a gigantic spending plan costing $410 billion, weighing in at $3,511 per household. And then came the bailouts: Another $30 billion for AIG, $36 billion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, $60 billion for GM and Chrysler, and just this week the Administration indicated it will give GMAC another $2.8 billion to $5.6 billion on top of the $12.5 billion of taxpayer money the company has already received since December 2008. What has it all brought us? It brought us our first trillion dollar deficit and a spending plan that will triple the national debt in the next ten years.
I found it more than a little ironic that on the day that I was on the House Floor speaking against more spending, the Speaker held a closed-door announcement of a trillion-dollar government takeover of our health care system. While I have not read the entirety of the Speaker’s 1,990 page bill yet, it appears to be no more than version 2.0 of the plan Americans rejected last summer.
It is hard to imagine why one would craft a bill to raise the cost and decrease the quality of our health care all at the same time, but it appears the bill’s sponsors have done just that. At a bare minimum, strictly from a fiscal standpoint, any health care legislation must not add to the deficit. We need to bend the health care cost curve downward – and no honest observer believes a government take-over will do that.
I will continue supporting health care reform efforts that will protect the rights of those who currently have health care while using innovative solutions to provide those without health care the opportunity to access quality, affordable, and timely health care.
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