Tom Coburn: “we have heard a lot in the press, and we have certainly heard a lot from our own Finance Committee, and we have seen…”

“we have heard a lot in the press, and we have certainly heard a lot from our own Finance Committee, and we have seen what the House passed in terms of the stimulus package. I think, once again, in our hurry to address a problem, we have not asked: Are we fixing the right problem, the problem in connection with the House leadership passing a bill that will spend $150 billion. One of the first questions we ought to ask is, Where is that money coming from, the $150 billion? Nobody can dispute the fact that we are going to borrow that from our grandchildren; we are going to go to the markets and borrow the money to stimulate our economy. Nobody will dispute the fact that there is very little payback into the Treasury, in terms of tax collections, from this stimulus plan. The facts as they are, we had an overheated housing boom. We can deny economic reality, but until we mark the market--the overinflated cost that has extended credit in our country--and recognize that is going to have to be paid for, we are not going to walk out of this slowdown we appear to be facing. The reality is that the model is the Japanese banking industry: When they refused to recognize the losses, what it did was impact their economy for 10 years. So the realities are that there has to be an economic price when we have an economic excess. Our job should be to make that as easy on our economy as we can, thinking about the future of our economy.…”