Angie Craig: “I did not agree with the stimulus package we debated a month ago. I did not agree with borrowing $150 billion and…”

“I did not agree with the stimulus package we debated a month ago. I did not agree with borrowing $150 billion and standing on street corners and handing out $500 bills. That helps someone, but it does not help the economy in general because that money has not been handed out yet. What we do today, and if it were to become law in a reasonable period of time, would deal with one of the bigger industries in our country. I think few people, unless you look at it, recognize the value of the housing industry to our country, its breadth and its depth. One of the things I monitor in Idaho, and I know my colleague from Montana, who is on the floor, monitors as chairman of the Finance Committee is mill closures; that is, sawmill closures, across the United States since the first of the year because the timber industry is flat. It is at a 40-year low in prices of dimensional lumber. Why is it? Because the housing industry is flat. Talk to plumbing fixture manufacturers and everybody else out there and look at the breadth and the depth of the housing economy. So it is time we deal with the real problem.”