Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen).

Mr. OBEY. I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. OBEY. Could I inquire of the gentleman how many speakers he has remaining?

Mr. OBEY. Then I would ask the gentleman to proceed. We have only two left--the Speaker, and I will be closing.

Mr. OBEY. Could I inquire of the gentleman how many speakers he has remaining?

Mr. OBEY. Then I would yield 1 minute to the distinguished Speaker of the House.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, could I inquire how many more speakers the gentleman has.

Mr. OBEY. Would the gentleman yield?

Mr. OBEY. Let me simply thank the gentleman for his comments and say that I appreciate the fact that we can debate these issues and still remain personal friends. And I also want to thank, as the gentleman has, I want to thank profoundly the staff of this committee and all the committees who worked so hard. So often these people go 1 and 2 and 3 days in a row with little or no sleep. That certainly has been the case this week, and I'm profoundly grateful to the staff, certainly on our side of the aisle, especially Beverly Pheto who has become staff director because the White House stole our previous staff director.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, this is the last time that Dale Oak will be on this floor serving us as a member of the staff of the Appropriations Committee. He has been serving as the chief clerk for the Financial Services Subcommittee. He has served the Appropriations Committee in this House for 14 years, working for both the Republicans and Democrats, as has often been the tradition on the Appropriations Committee. He is leaving, and I simply want to thank him for the service he has given to the Committee and to the House, and wish him all the best in his new endeavor. He has been an incredibly hard worker, and we are all lucky to have public servants like him helping us. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Has the gentleman from California yielded back his time?

Mr. OBEY. Just one.

Mr. OBEY. How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. OBEY. I yield myself 5 minutes. Madam Speaker, this bill is more than 150 days late. And every day that we delay, if you take a look at what's happening in the economy, an additional 20,000 people are losing their jobs. So we've had plenty of time to talk about our philosophical differences. We've had plenty of time to talk about our different views of the viability of the market. We've had plenty of time to talk about our views of the role of government. But people back home are not interested in our theoretical or our philosophical views. They're interested in whether or not we have a clue about what is happening on Main Street America, what is happening in businesses all over this country, what is happening when metal working companies and paper mills and dozens of other businesses lay off workers every day, every hour. And they want to know whether we can end the speechifying long enough to actually do something that will help them. That's what this is about. So we can argue about one-tenth of 1 percent of this bill, whether we like it or not. The fact is that some of the same people who were only too willing to vote for $1.2 trillion worth of tax cuts paid for with borrowed money under President Bush, the same people who were willing to allow us to go to war and spend over $1 trillion in a war that will plague us for years, these are the same people who supported economic policies that, essentially, resulted in the average working family having flat wages for the last 8 years. These same people are now telling us, ``Oh, don't do this. We've got a better idea.'' Well, we've tried those ideas for 8 years, and what has been the result? The result has been that, for the last 8 years, over 94 percent of the economic growth in this country, over 94 percent of the economic growth of this country went into the pockets of the wealthiest 10 percent of American families. And so, the other 90 percent were struggling to get table scraps. And how did they respond? They responded by borrowing. They borrowed more for their houses. They borrowed more to send their kids to college. They borrowed more to pay for health care and a lot of other things. And then, the housing bubble and the Wall Street bubble burst and they got hit with the results. And so, now they are suffering for the bubbles that we've had in the economy the past 8 years. And they're looking for somebody to recognize what's happened to them and looking for somebody who will help to actually do something about the fact that they're losing their health care, losing their homes, losing their jobs, losing their ability to send the kids to college, and losing hope. This package, by itself, will not solve any of those problems. All it will do, if we can finally produce it, all it will do is to minimize the damage and to try to inject an additional source of consumer spending in the economy, in hopes that we can begin the process of eventually turning this economy around. That's what this is all about. We've had our time for debates. It's been a long time now, over 150 days, as I said. The time to move is now. General Leave

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the motions on H.R. 1 considered today.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. I have one speaker, myself.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I don't intend to take a lot of time, but I do want to respond to some of the claims and comments made today in opposition to this legislation. First of all, I do want to thank the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Cole). Like myself, he is a committed partisan, and I think, like myself, he is also an institutionalist, and while I recognize that he very much differs with the product that we have before us, I appreciate the fact that he did indicate that the committee consideration of this bill was an open process. Let me simply respond to a few of the comments made by my friends on the other side of the aisle. We're told by numerous speakers that this package is too large. In fact, I fear that it may be too small. We can't determine the proper size of any economic recovery package unless we have some understanding and some anticipation of the size of the problem that it is meant to alleviate. My old friend Archie the Cockroach, for instance, in talking about the need for proportion said once, In life you always need proportion. ``Of what use is it for a queen bee to fall in love with a bull?'' I think that if we have large and serious economic crisis coming at us, that response needs to be large, bold and aggressive, and that's what I believe the President's package is. Now, this package is $820 billion. It represents less than 6 percent of our total gross domestic product spread over several years. I would point out that when World War II hit us governmental spending went from 10 percent of GDP in 1940 to 44 percent in 1943 and 1944, a huge percentage, an increase of 34 percent. That was to save the country in time of war. I would submit that the challenge to our economy today is every bit as large as the challenge of World War II was to this country in another time because we have been faced with the prospect of virtually total collapse of the financial sector of this economy. Under the previous President, President Bush, when the crisis finally hit, this Congress gave him the benefit of the doubt, and even though we, many of us, had strong misgivings about the wisdom of the proposal, and even though many of us were frustrated by the fact that Secretary Paulson would not provide sufficient relief on the mortgage front, we nonetheless supported the President's request because we were told that the alternative was to see an absolute freeze up and collapse of the credit markets in this country, with disastrous results. Not just for those Wall Street wizards who helped cause the problem, but would also have resulted in the crushing of everybody else below them on the economic ladder as they fell from their Wall Street perches. And now the President is asking us to do two additional things. His Secretary of the Treasury today is scheduled to explain to the country what their second step will be with respect to trying to stabilize the financial system in this country and, at the same time, trying to do something to deal with the horrendous collapse of housing prices and the horrendous collapse of people's equity in their homes. And then the next thing the President wants us to do is to pass this package. Now, this package, as I've said, is a huge, huge endeavor. It is certainly of the size that would have been shocking just a few months ago, but it's responding to a problem just as large, and I want to show you what we're trying to respond to. This chart shows projected unemployment levels from now through 2 years from today. It was presented by Mr. Mark Zandi, one of the principal economic advisers to Senator McCain in the last campaign. He represents Moody's Economy.com. The red bars indicate what he expects to happen to the unemployment levels if we do nothing. What he expects is that unemployment will rise from over 7 percent, slightly over 7 percent where it is today, to almost 11 percent and perhaps even higher 2 years from now. In other words, he sees the economy sliding ever more deeply into the abyss over the next 2 years if we do nothing. The blue bars represent what he thinks the unemployment levels will be if we do pass a $750 billion economic recovery package. Even then, he projects that by the second quarter of--not this year, but next year--he projects that unemployment will still have risen to around 9 percent. As the President said last night, what that means is that no matter what we do, we are going to have a very, very rough year. And it is his hope and it is the expectation of most economists that if we pass this package, or something close to it, then we will be able to mitigate the rise in unemployment, that we will be able to reduce the expected levels of unemployment by at least 2 percent. And we hope what that will do is to begin to bring additional revenues back into the Treasury and, at the same time, in combination with the other actions of the President, restore a modicum of public confidence in the economy. Between those two actions, get the economy moving again, slowly but surely. So this package attempts to use the only tool that we have available to get the economy going again. Normally, when we run into economic trouble, what we would do is rely on monetary policy in order to get us out of it. The problem is we have already fired that gun. The Federal Reserve has already brought interest rates down to record low levels. So we don't have that bullet in the gun any more. About the only bullet left that we can fire is one of fiscal stimulus. And that is what this bill tries to do. It tries to make up for the fact that over the next 2\1/2\ years we are expected to have a $2.5 trillion hole in the economy because of the collapse of consumer purchasing power. And, as a result, what the President is trying to do is to partially fill that economic hole to mitigate the expected steep rise in unemployment. And so the President is trying, in essence, to create or preserve about 4 million jobs by providing additional funding to produce clean, efficient energy alternatives. He wants to provide more jobs by trying to transform our economy through beefing up science and technology. He wants to provide more jobs by modernizing roads, bridges, transit, and waterways, to deal with the crumbling infrastructure of the last 30 years. He wants to preserve hundreds of thousands of jobs by helping States to maintain their education budgets as their own revenue sources collapse so that we don't have to lay off school teachers; so we don't have to lay off janitors; so we don't have to lay off speech therapists and guidance counselors; so that we don't have to lay off cops; so that we don't have to lay off park workers. In addition, he wants us to provide tax cuts in order to enable the middle class to finally get a little better deal on the tax side of the ledger. He wants to help workers hurt by the economy by providing additional help for those who have lost their jobs by way of an extension and an expansion of unemployment compensation. And he also wants to help those who have lost their health insurance by providing greater access to Medicaid and by providing some help to keep up with what is called their COBRA payments. So that is what this package is all about. It is not perfect by any means. And we have substantial, but I hope not overpowering, differences between us and the Senate. And so the purpose of this motion is to simply have us get on with it. To take the next step we know that we have to take if we are going to do something constructive to move this country forward. We can all debate the fine points of this package until the cows come home, as they say in my area of the country. But the fact is, sooner or later we need to take heed and remember what Franklin Roosevelt said in a not very different situation years ago when he said, ``We need action, and action now.'' This package is meant to begin that process. I would urge Members to support the motion.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 1 of rule XXII and by direction of the Committee on Appropriations, I move to take from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 1) making supplemental appropriations for job preservation and creation, infrastructure investment, energy efficiency and science, assistance to the unemployed, and State and local fiscal stabilization, for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009, and for other purposes, with a Senate amendment thereto, disagree to the Senate amendment, and agree to the conference asked by the Senate.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, for purposes of debate only, I yield 30 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis). All time yielded during consideration of the motion is for debate only. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute. I think the need for this action is obvious. The country is in trouble economically. We need to put an economic recovery package in place just as soon as possible. Going to conference is the next step to making that happen, and I would urge support for the motion. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OBEY. I continue to reserve the balance of my time

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve my time.