Sam Brownback: “this is the largest spending bill ever to be voted on. It will probably be passed by this body. It has been done in the…”

“this is the largest spending bill ever to be voted on. It will probably be passed by this body. It has been done in the most rushed fashion that we have ever done a spending bill. It is the least bipartisan ever. Not a single Republican in the House voted for this bill; nine Democrats voted against it. Unfortunately, in conference, the bad parts of the bill got bigger and the good parts got smaller. We are left with a spending bill of gigantic proportions and a stimulus package that is small, by any measure. I will point out a few historical numbers. We have had stimulus packages in the past, and we have needed them. We need one now. We have never, in the history of the Republic, had a stimulus package over the size of 1 rac{1}{2} ext{ percent of GDP. That is the biggest we have ever done in the history of the Republic. This stimulus spending bill is 5.5 percent of the GDP of the entire country. It is huge--more than three times larger than any we have ever done. To give perspective, we did a stimulus package in 2008 in the amount of $152 billion. This is $800 billion. In 2001, it was $38 billion. That seems small by today's standards. This one is 5 rac{1}{2} ext{ percent of GDP. If you look at the actual tax cuts, there are things in the tax cuts I think are good. There are other things in spending I think are good, but they should not be in a stimulus bill. They should go through the regular order in a spending package. We will have the omnibus spending bill after the break.”