Pete Domenici: “I rise to outline my reasons for supporting the Senate Finance Committee stimulus package. I have reviewed various…”

“I rise to outline my reasons for supporting the Senate Finance Committee stimulus package. I have reviewed various proposals carefully. Clearly, the House-passed package is simply unacceptable. I predict that the House would not pass that bill again now that its flaws have been revealed. By denying rebates to Social Security recipients and veterans, yet giving it to illegal immigrants, the House has produced something most Americans would reject. I understand that in the rush to produce the package, the House may not have completely vetted each and every provision. So when I say it is simply unacceptable, I believe the way I have outlined what probably happened is true. They did a terrific job in a short period of time. It is just that the product, unfortunately, had to go somewhere else, it had to come here, and in coming here the good staff and others had to look at it in its entirety again, and they found what I described and the chairman of the full committee described. I say to the chairman of the full committee, I am not on this committee, but I follow it, and I know what is in the final package. Yesterday, the Institute for Supply Management reported that business activity in the nonmanufacturing sector of our economy contracted. That is the part of the economy that has been holding everything together. It had not been contracting; now it has. The level of that key indicator is now at its lowest level since 2001.”