Rep. Latta on Porkulus

Release:

WASHINGTON- Congressman Bob Latta (R-Bowling Green) made the following statement after he and all 178 House Republicans voted against H.R. 1, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

“Unfortunately, H.R. 1, the Democrat’s spending bill, is still fundamentally flawed and the Conference Committee did nothing to change the fact that this is basically a pork barrel bill by the Democrat majority in Congress and the administration. No one had time to read this legislation which will cost American taxpayers over $1 trillion, in addition to Republicans being shut-out of the Conference Committee process.

As our nation shoulders the burden of a recession and Americans continue to feel the effects of rising unemployment rates, the Democrat majority has decided to send our nation further into debt, passing the buck to our next generation with wasteful spending that does nothing to create jobs tomorrow, next month, or even next year.

Our economy needs fast and immediate relief, and unfortunately, spending $50 million on the National Endowment for the Arts, $200 million for volunteerism programs or $1 billion for the 2010 Census, do nothing to quickly pull our country out of recession. Furthermore, members of Congress have asked repeatedly for numbers showing how many jobs will be created with this package. To date, we have yet to see any statistics that prove this package will work in terms of job creation or reducing the growing unemployment rate. I, along with my Republican Colleagues in the House, believe that the fastest way to recover from this recession is immediate tax relief for small businesses and incentives to promote job growth. The private sector, not the Federal government, is best suited to stimulate the economy and this can be done through tax relief which will put money directly in the hands of American families and businesses- where it deserves to be. House Republicans offered an alternative stimulus package that would create twice as many jobs as H.R. 1, for half of the cost. In Ohio alone, the Republican alternative plan would create an addition 104,000 more jobs than the Democrats’ spending bill.

With our national debt at a staggering $10.6 trillion, the American people, along with House Republicans, know that we as a country cannot borrow and spend our way out of this recession. Americans already owe foreign governments $3 trillion, with China owning $683 billion of that alone. We cannot in good faith continue to drive our national debt higher and place future generations of Americans in peril by enacting a plan that is little more than a “shot in the dark.”