On the recordJune 21, 2011
As always, it's an honor to speak here in the House of Representatives. I heard Democratic friends mention earlier that what we need to do to get the economy going is start spending on infrastructure because our grandchildren will really appreciate the dollars that they have to pay years from now that we spent on infrastructure. The only thing is, that's exactly what our friends across the aisle were saying in January of 2009 when they wanted an $800 billion stimulus package that turned out to be maybe $900 billion or $1 trillion. It was going to be for infrastructure. And many in the American public said, yeah, that's a good idea. It turned out that only around 6 percent or so, 6 to 7 percent may have been for infrastructure. Okay. Fooled us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us. The thing is, some of us weren't fooled even back then. We had already seen things that were said that would be done that were not done. So I voted against that so-called ``porkulus'' stimulus, or whatever you want to call it, bill. I voted against TARP because in America we're not supposed to just give one man $700 billion and say, go do whatever you want with all this money; we don't care, just fix things. Because he certainly didn't fix things, although he did engorge his buddies at Goldman Sachs. Nonetheless, we do face economic difficulties. And within the last 2 weeks there were six of us, a bipartisan group, in Turkey.…
