Senator Jim DeMint: People are Fed Up, The Federal Government is Too Big

U.S. Senate, September 8, 2009. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) speaks against YET ANOTHER GOVERNMENT AGENCY "to promote tourism."


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TRANSCRIPT
http://www.c-spanarchives.org/congress/?q=node/77531&id=9029207

Jim DeMint [R-SC]: "Mr. President, if you were like me, you probably held a number of townhalls. I know a number of our colleagues over the holidays did. I saw a number of them on television and saw the many thousands of Americans who came to townhalls, as they did to mine, who were very concerned about the direction of our country.

Frankly, in South Carolina, I had several thousand people come to different townhall meetings, all with a very similar point of view. They thought this government had gotten too big, was spending too much money, or taxing too much and taking over too much of our economy.

(...)

People are fed up. The Federal Government is simply too big. The debts we are looking at now for ourselves and our children and our grandchildren are truly unsustainable. People do not know where the money is coming from. They wonder what we are thinking about.

The amazing thing is, after what we saw over the break, the genuine outrage and concern by the American people, the very first item of business we are going to vote on in this Senate today after the August break is to vote to start another government program, to spend $400 million, to increase taxes, to get the Federal Government involved in another private sector business.

(...)

We have over $11 trillion in debt already. We are projecting to almost double that over the next 10 years with what we already have on the books. With Social Security and Medicare alone, the unfunded liability out many years is like $100 trillion. We have no idea where we are going to get all this money.

How can we even discuss starting a new government entity when the ones we have started are at the heart of our economic problems. One can't understand our economy without seeing that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played a key role in bringing the worldwide economy to its knees. We don't have to look back but 1 month to see what the last government program we created in cash for clunkers did.

It was going to be a $1 billion, 6-month promotion to sell a lot of cars. We were out of money in 1 week, and we voted to pass another $2 billion. A couple weeks later, they canceled the program. We can't run the travel and promotion industry from Washington, DC.

I have to draw a very difficult conclusion. Any of my fellow Senators who vote for this either don't understand the severity of our economic and fiscal problems or they don't care.

They certainly didn't hear the millions of Americans speaking over the August break and telling us they want us to get back to the business of a constitutional form of government and stop trying to win votes by bringing home the bacon--wasteful spending, earmarks, and new government programs, all the false, empty promises based on government solutions.

I encourage colleagues, let us get the rest of the year started off in a reasonable way. Let's talk about how to fix health care. Let's talk about how to create jobs. For heaven's sake, let's not create a new government program as the first vote we take in the Senate.

I yield the floor."

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[RodneyHampton]

4:11 and he STILL cannot get to the point.

[jaralero]

Hey Rodney!, that's not fair, he got to the point in 40 seconds: "They thought this gov. had gotten too big, was spending too much money, or taxing too much and taking over too much of our economy." The speech is philosophical anyway.

Your booklist of classic authors on the morality of coinage looks pretty good (Aristotle, Locke). Google Books has a preview of "Faith and liberty: the economic thought of the late scholastics" which includes a review of Mariana's "On the Debasement of Money."

[healthhavencom]

great speech

[Diazt3r]

yea the government is way too big and the most important fact is that IT IS NOT efficient.