Madam President, I have been listening to the debate this morning. I want to make one point. How did we get where we are? We have seen all this finger pointing. We have said that President Bush got us where we are, that we do not want to take responsibility for the fact he could not spend a penny we did not give him, and the vast majority--97 percent of the majority--voted for every appropriations bill that came through this place.
So when we point to other people, where we need to be pointing is to us. The vast majority of the majority party voted against every amendment. I offered over $10 billion per appropriations cycle on the bills. The vast majority voted against the cut. So I think if we are going to point to a pox on a house, it ought to come right here--the lack of responsibility, where we demonstrate with our actions every day we are much more interested in the next election than we are in the next generation.
We heard Senator Alexander today talking about that it is not our money, it is the taxpayers' money, and we are going to have to pay it back. Nobody alive in this room today will pay back any of this money. Their children and their grandchildren will pay back this money.
This bill is doing exactly the same thing we did to get into this mess. We are about to spend $1 trillion of money we don't have for the vast majority of the things in this bill that we don't need.
Let me explain to the American people a little bit of the workings in the Senate. There is about $300 billion worth of spending in the bill we have on the floor that has been put in there so we won't have to make hard choices when it comes to the appropriations bills that come through this body this year. So we take $300 billion that we know should be in the regular appropriations bills and we put it in this bill so we don't have to use regular order. That gives us more room to do more Government spending, more interference in the lives of Americans without being responsible for it. When I say $300 billion, the real cost is $600 billion.
It strikes me that if you were going to ask the American people how best to stimulate the economy and you are going to spend $1 trillion to do it, the best and smartest allocation of those resources would be to give the money back to the American people. In our wisdom, we think we know better than they do how to spend money. The thing that made this the greatest country in the world is this wonderful market capitalism that said people will serve their own best interests. We have the very ego to think we can decide for them.
I think we need some stimulus--I don't disagree with that--but I don't think we need to do it right now. I think we need to fix the mortgage market and the housing market and the credit market before we touch any kind of stimulus. If we do a stimulus, the best stimulus we could do would be to give the money back to the American people and let them allocate it in ways they know are best for them individually. That proposal was rejected out of hand. Now, why would that be rejected? Because we have this false sense that Washington knows better. Well, I will tell my colleagues the predicament we are in proves we don't. We don't know better, we don't have a clue, when we bring a $900 billion spending bill to the floor and we have accepted one amendment to cut $246 million out of it and we have had votes--both voice votes and recorded votes--on less than 20 amendments, and we are told by the majority leader we have to finish so we can get to conference. This bill ought to have 1,000 amendments on it, if we are truly going to do the work of the American people. We ought to debate this bill line by line. I will not agree to any unanimous consent until the next 15 amendments I have, have a scheduled time to be brought up so the American people can hear about all the stinky stuff that is in this bill.
The biggest earmark in history is in this bill: $2 billion. There are tons of things that need to come out of this bill. As the American people have learned what is in this bill, their common sense--which is on a one-for-one basis a thousandfold greater than our common sense as Senators--is being totally ignored. That is why the people in this country routinely are rejecting this bill now. You can do all the promotion of it you want; you can use all the moveon.org; you can do all the Web sites you want, but when they smell a skunk--their olfactory senses are quite acute--this is a skunk. This bill stinks. This bill is the biggest generational theft bill that has ever come through this body. What I mean by that is we have a standard of living in this country that is 30 percent greater than anywhere else in the world, and it will guarantee, this bill will guarantee your children and grandchildren will lose every bit of that edge, every bit of it.
So how did we get here? We got here by us thinking we knew better, by us ignoring the very principles that created this great country. Then we refused to admit it. We created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Then we blamed an administration when we tied their hands to fix it, and we say it is an administration's fault when it is our fault. We tried to socialize the risk so everybody in this country, even if they couldn't afford it, could have a home. Now what we are doing is we are going to charge our grandchildren to get us out of it when we were in a business where we never had any business. If you look at the enumerated powers of the Constitution, it gives us no authority whatsoever to do what we have done. So when we abandon the principles we were founded upon, we get in tremendously tall, deep weeds. That is where we find ourselves now.
The idea that we can borrow more money we don't have to spend on more things we don't need and ignore the wisdom of the average American citizen on how best to spend their money is insane. Yet we have spent 2 1/2 days--that is all we have spent so far on a $1 trillion bill, 2 1/2 days--and have had 20 votes, and now we are told by the majority leader we need to hurry up. ``Hurry up'' is what got us in this trouble. We need a methodical explanation to the American people for every line that is in this bill--every line item. We need an explanation of why we are putting in Medicaid funds to bail out the [Page: S1636] States at twice the level of what the Governors actually asked for. Why would we do that? Because we know better. In our ultimate wisdom, we know better? And while we are talking about the States, the worst thing we can do is bail out the States because we will be transferring our wonderful illogic to the States and saying you don't have to be fiscally responsible. That is what we are going to be telling them, so that in the future, they won't put in a rainy day fund, as Oklahoma has, and plan for the future and control their spending increases. No, they will say: Don't worry about it; the Federal Government will come bail us out.
I am adamantly opposed to us transferring the absolute economic chaos we have created to the States. The States need to make hard choices now. We need to do what we need to do, which is fix housing, fix mortgages, fix the banking system. Then, when we have done that, which will fix all these other problems, then come with a real stimulus that allows the American people--the American people--much like what the majority of the McCain bill does--to decide how they are going to spend the money.
Since we are so down on the business sector in this country that creates all the jobs, small business and large business alike, why don't we think about maybe having a competitive tax on our corporations that is competitive with the rest of the world. No. What do we do? We have one 10 percent higher than anybody else in the world. Yet it is business's fault we are in this mess. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are in this mess because Congress put us in this mess; not any President, not Bill Clinton, not George Bush, and certainly not Barack Obama.
Let's be honest with the American people. Let's fess up: We don't know what we are doing. A $1 trillion bill was cobbled together in 4 weeks with earmarks like crazy through it for every special interest group that is out there so we can look good to certain of our buddies and especially the ones who give us campaign contributions. That is what describes this bill, not an ethical, methodical, ``how do we fix the problem we have'' kind of scrutiny that is required. You cannot fix a problem until you know what the problem is, and the problem is us. We created this mess, and our actions created this mess.
The President signed the children's health program. I am not opposed to a children's health program. I am not opposed to helping children get the health care they need. But this body rejected a way to do that which wouldn't have increased taxes $71 billion and would have covered every child. But, no, we are smarter than that because we want to tell people where they are going to get their health care and how they are going to get it. And then, when we can't afford it, do you know what we are going to do? We are going to ration it, just like every other country that has centralized control over their health care. Then what is going to happen to our cancer cure rates which are 50 percent higher than anywhere else in the world? They are going to be the same as the rest of the world: They are going to go down. Now we have comparative effectiveness that we want to put through that says the Government--some Government bureaucrat is going to tell doctors how to practice medicine. That is in this too. We are going to have them tell us how to practice medicine. We forgot one thing on the way to the barn, and that is the practice of medicine is 40 percent art and 60 percent science and
everywhere in the world, where they have a centralized government health care system, they have thrown out the art of medicine, which tends to deal with the whole person and how that interacts with the physical aspects of that person.
To me, it is deeply disappointing that we find ourselves where we are today. I don't think pointing fingers anywhere except back at ourselves accomplishes anything. Yet I have heard that three or four times this morning on the floor: It is somebody else's fault. No, it is not; it is our fault.
The first thing to getting healthy as addicts is to admit we have a problem. We need to be in a 10-step program. That is what we need, a 10-step program that will put us back on the board to where our Founding Fathers thought we ought to be and where the average American wants us to be. We are addicted to the ego of trying to run other people's lives. We are addicted to the ego of spending money, thinking we know best how to spend it. We are addicted to the ego that when somebody else has problems, we can always fix it. We can't always fix it. We can't fix all the problems that are in front of us today. The American people, through their own ingenuity and their own sacrifice, are going to have to make some hard choices. When we don't make hard choices, we are doubly guilty because what we have done is we have made the choices harder for them that they are going to have to make.
My prayer--and it is a prayer--is that we would, as a body, drop the words ``Democrat'' and ``Republican,'' drop the words ``conservative'' and ``liberal,'' and that our goal would be what is in the most efficient, long-term, best interests of those of us who are here today and those who are coming.
I ran a campaign to become Senator and the focus of my campaign, unfortunately, was we were about to find ourselves where we are today. I am so sorry I was right. I am so sorry I was right, but it doesn't take a lot of vision to see where we were going. Nobody has voted against President Bush and nobody has voted against more appropriations bills than me. It didn't have anything to do with party politics; it had everything to do with the future. Yet we find ourselves bogged down in debate.
I wish to add one other thing. One of the reasons we have to get out of here is because we have Members who have booked hotels this weekend. Tell me how many people in America think that is an important reason for us to hurry up and finish this bill. There is no reason for us to hurry up, No. 1. There is no reason for us not to look at every area of this bill and make sure the American people know about it. There is no reason for us not to do what the average man would do, and that is make priorities.
The other problem with this bill, which is extremely disappointing--and I know it has to be to President Obama because he campaigned on a line-by-line look at the Federal Government to get rid of some of the $300 billion every year in waste, fraud, and abuse. That was one of his campaign issues. One of his campaign promises was to do competitive bidding on every contract over $25,000. There is not one mandate in this bill to force competitive bidding. That is one of the amendments I wish to offer, to force us to do competitive bidding. If we are going to pass this stinky bill, at least if we waste $1 trillion, we will waste it efficiently.
When I look at my grandkids, as does everybody else in this country, we wish for the best for our grandchildren. I have to tell my colleagues this body has put the first shackle already on their future. When we pass this bill, we are going to put that lock around their other leg and we are going to put a padlock on it and we are going to throw away the key and we are going to hobble them away from the American dream.
We are going to take it away. We are going to take away the very bright light shining on a hill. America, if you are listening, don't let this body do what it is about to do. It will ruin your children's future in the name of us knowing best rather than you knowing best.
