Tom Feeney: “I rise to congratulate the Committee on the Budget and the chairman for the fine work they have done during admittedly…”

“I rise to congratulate the Committee on the Budget and the chairman for the fine work they have done during admittedly very difficult times, internationally and at home. I must admit, I have spent the last 3 hours listening to some great debates, but I do not know exactly where they are coming from. I feel like I am getting economics lessons from the same folks that taught geography to the Flat Earth Society. What I am hearing from the same folks is the same philosophy that for 3 or 4 decades now has taken the position that we can spend, spend, spend our way out of trouble, is that we ought to somehow shrink a deficit that has been created largely over 30 or 40 years of spending. The truth of the matter is that there are two approaches being taken here tonight. One side is advocating that we can spend our way out of trouble. The other side is advocating that we can grow our way out of trouble. The economic stimulus package that we are talking about, in the Kennedyesque style of the early sixties and the Reaganesque style of the 1980s is such that it will produce the same amount of growth that those great Presidents produced when they took the position that we can grow our way out of tough economic times.”