Douglas Alexander: “the stimulus bill is the subject of discussion. There are some things we know about it and some we don't. We know, for…”

“the stimulus bill is the subject of discussion. There are some things we know about it and some we don't. We know, for example, it is a massive amount of money, almost $800 billion. These are numbers we throw around. But according to the Politico newspaper last month, this is more than we spent on Iraq, more than we spent on Afghanistan, more than we spent going to the Moon in today's dollars, and more than the Federal Government spent in the entire New Deal in today's dollars. It's a massive amount of money. It is not like some of the money we were authorizing to be spent in October and November, when we were giving the Department of the Treasury, in effect, a line of credit to help financial institutions begin to lend again so people could get auto loans. This is money we are spending. It goes out the door. We have to pay it back. It adds to the national debt. It took from the founding of our country all the way to the late 1970s to accumulate a national debt as large as the amount of money we are spending in this bill. We have been moving rapidly on this legislation. It is not only spending. The amount of money spent for education is such that it may be the largest Federal education bill we have ever passed in terms of dollars. The amount of money spent for energy is enough that it will be one of the largest Energy bills.”