February 12th, 2009, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today urged members of the Congress to vote against the 1434-page trillion dollar spending bill currently being considered, insisting lawmakers to go back to the drawing board and “produce a bill that would actually stimulate growth of the economy, stabilize the financial system, and pay down the national debt.”
Wilson pointed to a $30 million provision for wetland restoration to protect the salt marsh harvest mouse in San Francisco as “a symbol of the complete and utter waste of tax dollars contained in a bill which proponents claim will ‘save’ the economy.”
“Instead of ‘saving’ the economy, Congress, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is concerned with saving mice,” Wilson added. “The American people now know they’ve been lied to. There was supposed to be no pork in this bill. This could be a tipping point that causes the people to demand that this bill be pulled back and redrawn.”
Wilson believes the spending in the bill comes at the wrong time with the private sector shrinking, jobs being lost, and government spending exploding.
“This trillion dollar spending bill Congress will vote on in the next few days will only divert precious, critical capital away from the private sector by dramatically and permanently increasing government spending, thereby increasing the financial burden government poses to the economy and to future generations,” Wilson said.
According to Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), the Senate version of the bill “will add $10,800 of debt to every American family…” when he cited a CBO report that predicts the legislation will cause our GDP to shrink over the long term.
The current national debt nears $10.7 trillion, and the CBO-projected deficit without this legislation this year is $1.2 trillion.
“Leaders of Congress are exploiting the economic crisis to pay off key political constituencies: state governments, public employee unions, transportation and construction unions, the environmental lobby, the education lobby, and of course, delivers hundreds of billions of pork all across the nation,” Wilson said.
Congressional Democrats met over the past two days and arrived at the conference report, with the bill now totaling $789 billion, or $1.1 trillion after interest. It includes roughly $97 billion in new spending programs, and $92 billion of expansions of existing federal programs.
It also includes $53.6 billion for states to balance their budgets, $45 billion of which boosts education spending, $50 billion in green energy subsidies and tax credits, $55 billion for transportation projects, make groups like ACORN eligible for up to $2 billion in neighborhood stabilization funds, extends food stamps and unemployment benefits, builds federal buildings, provides more for public housing, constructs climate change supercomputers, erects trade barriers overseas, creates refundable tax credits, and provisions for high-speed Internet service.
Wilson noted that even though the House passed a motion on Tuesday allowing 48 hours for the conference report to be viewed publicly before being voted, that the House could vote on the bill as early as today.
“Never before has such a large spending bill been produced so quickly and put on the fast track so rapidly,” said Wilson. “In their rush to claim they ‘did something,’ members of Congress and the President have missed a key opportunity to do the right thing.”
Wilson recommends a massive reduction of the federal budget, a plan to pay off the national debt, permanent tax relief for businesses and individuals, the privatization of the mortgage industry, the abolition of the dual mandate at the Federal Reserve, and the elimination of public financing of consumer, business, student, and homeowner debt.
“Congress has decided not to even address the root causes of the current economic calamity: easy money from the Fed coupled by the massive expansion of credit and lending,” Wilson said.
“Instead it is boosting debt, setting an unsustainable baseline for future budgets, and of course, saving mice,” Wilson concluded.
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Interview Availability: Please contact Alex Rosenwald at (703)383-0880 or at arosenwald@getliberty.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.