On the recordJune 22, 2010
It's always an honor to be here and to be speaking on the floor where so many who have served this country so honorably and well have done the same thing. I never lose sight of that fact. It gets a little discouraging at times. It's interesting to hear the stimulus is working because that's what George W. Bush was doing. And as I recall, in 2006, the Republicans lost the majority because Democrats convinced them that it was the wrong thing to do. And you know what? The Democrats were right. They appropriately won the majority because, as they said, we should not be deficit spending, you're killing the country, you're killing the economy by running up this kind of debt, and they won the majority in 2006 because they were right. We should not have been deficit spending like that. But that went on. So it's interesting to hear, just 4 short years later, that it turns out that what President Bush was doing and was encouraging to be done is actually the good thing. Though, I still tend to go back and think of those of us on the Republican side who agreed that we needed to get out from under the deficit spending and that we needed to get spending under control. Having compassion and spending money to a deficit level is not the same thing. It's the Federal Government, like a parent, who is just throwing money at their kids, thinking that's going to make them happy and that everybody will be loving and caring.
