Recovery Rebates and Economic Stimulus for the American People Act of 2008

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I guess this afternoon I am going to be a fairly lonely voice in opposition to this bipartisan agreement, and I hope that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will listen as in the next 3 minutes I present to you five reasons why ...

Mr. CAMPBELL of California. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I guess this afternoon I am going to be a fairly lonely voice in opposition to this bipartisan agreement, and I hope that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will listen as in the next 3 minutes I present to you five reasons why I think we should not be passing this bill.

First of all, it is not really going to be stimulative. Look at what caused the problem that we are in right now. This is a credit problem and a capital problem. We got into this arguably because people borrowed and spent too much money. So what are we going to do? We are going to send people a check and say, spend it. Go buy a flat screen TV and save America. I just donand#39;t think that is the proper stimulus or the right way to go about this.

Second, it is really wealth redistribution. People who pay well over 50 percent of the taxes in this country get nothing, zero, nada. But yet a substantial portion of this package will go to people who pay nothing in taxes. So we call it a tax rebate, but people are going to get a rebate who paid nothing, and people who paid most of the taxes will get nothing.

Third, it increases the deficit. We have had three years of decline in this deficit. We are finally seeing perhaps the end of these deficits. And now with this and everything going on, we are looking at increasing it for the first time in 4 years, maybe going back to a deficit as much as $400 billion, which gets us back almost to where we were before 9/11.

Fourth, I know that it says in there that nonresident aliens, meaning illegal aliens, are not supposed to get a check. However, this is a 2007 1040 form, and if you look at it, you can look around all over the place and see there is no box to check where it says I am a nonresident or illegal alien and therefore am not eligible to receive this check. This thing is ripe for fraud, because you send in a tax return paying no money and get a check. So there will be opportunities for fraud.

Finally, fifth, it goes against all of our long-term goals. We all sit in here on a bipartisan basis, particularly my friends on the Democratic side have talked about reducing the deficit and getting to a balanced budget. We have talked in this country that we donand#39;t save enough. We talked in this country that many times we need to invest more, as some of our friends in some of the emerging markets are doing.

We are sending completely the wrong message here, a message which is donand#39;t save, spend; a message for the government which is donand#39;t save, donand#39;t balance, but spend. We do need stimulus.

We should be providing stimulus that attacks the problem. If your leg hurts, donand#39;t do something to try and help your arm. Help your leg. Our leg hurts. The leg that hurts is credit and capital, and there is stimulus we could do that would enhance the availability of credit and encourage the movement and investment of capital. Unfortunately, this doesnand#39;t do that.