CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Feb. 1, 2009 – 4:33 p.m.
Noted and Quoted
By CQ Staff
A roundup of what they said about the stimulus on the Sunday talk shows:
• CBS’s “Face the Nation”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , R-Ky.
“... you know, there’s $600 million for new cars for federal employees in there and $150 million for honeybee insurance. This is nonsense. I doubt if the government buying $600 million worth of automobiles would provide the kind of stimulus that we’re talking about here. And we certainly don’t need honeybee insurance. ...You know, this is huge money. This is — someone said the other day that, if you started the day Jesus Christ was born and spent $1 million every day since then, you still wouldn’t have spent $1 trillion.”
Sen. Charles E. Schumer , D-N.Y.
“The overall bill the president has submitted to us, which has largely been passed by the House and being considered by the Senate, is the right bill. Now, are there certain things that should come out? Some we’ve already taken out ... The real worry here, the dramatic worry, which we all have to be worried about, is far more important than $150 million for honey bees or whatever, which could be put somewhere else if Sen. McConnell wants it. But the worry here is that we get into a deflationary spiral downward and no one knows how to get out of that. You know when the last one we had was? It was called the Great Depression.”
• NBC’s “Meet the Press”
Sen. John Kerry , D-Mass.
“But we also have to invest in long-term job creation. So there’s money in here to create 10,000 libraries, laboratories, classrooms. There’s money in here to help get the Internet out, broadband, into communities that haven’t been able to afford it which, incidentally, was a plan of President Bush’s in 2004 but never implemented.”
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison , R-Texas
“We need to look at the enormity of it and everyone agrees that we need stimulus. We do. But when we’re talking about redoing this bill, if we’re talking about just adding more, I think we will be wasting a lot of money and adding to the debt.”
• ABC’s “This Week”
Sen. Jim DeMint , R-S.C.
“Well, the quickest way to — to get money in the economy is not to take it out in the first place. ... But then we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. We’ve got a regulatory system that makes us less competitive. So we — we actually put these people out of work, ship jobs overseas with bad policy, and then we want to put our hand up and stop our imports from coming in. ...And so it really comes down to a basic argument: Do you want a government-directed plan or do you want the free markets to work?”
Rep. Barney Frank , D-Mass.
““And I don’t understand why, from some of my conservative friends, building a road, building a school, helping somebody get health care, that’s — that’s wasteful spending, but that war in Iraq, which is going to cost us over $1 trillion before we’re through ... I also disagree that we’re taking money, quote, ‘out of the economy’ if we improve public transportation, if we improve highways. That’s your concept. You’re taking money out of the economy if you make sure a bridge doesn’t fall down. I think you keep people out of the water. You’re not taking money out of the economy.”
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