FreedomWorks

Washington, DC - Former House Majority Leader and FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey will testify as the minority witness before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform this morning.

The hearing will review the “Recovery Act” and the failed stimulus program as unemployment surges past ten percent.   When the stimulus was rushed through in February, the administration predicted the unemployment rate would peak at just under 8 percent in 2009. 

Based on the unemployment numbers, the stimulus failed and our children will be saddled with catastrophic levels of debt.  Chairman Armey is saddened that the economic legacy we are leaving our children is higher taxes and morbid rates of economic growth caused by tens of trillions of dollars in debt and unfunded liabilities.

From Chairman Armey’s testimony:

“Attempting to fix a problem caused by government policies that push too much borrowing and spending by instituting a new government policy of too much borrowing and spending was a terribly poor decision…  If too much government spending brought economic prosperity, we would be experiencing the Bush Boom now.  Clearly, we are not.”

“One of the main flaws with the stimulus was that the money government spent had to come from somewhere, and thin air was not an option.  The only way the government gets money is through higher taxes, borrowing, or printing—that is, it has to take it out of the economy in order to put it back into the economy.”

“But even if we take the estimated job creation in question as fact, the 640,329 jobs supposedly ”saved or created” by the stimulus is still 3 or so million less than the 3 to 4 million jobs Democrats predicted the stimulus would create.  It is also hard to ignore the extraordinary disparity between the 640,329 jobs “saved or created” by the stimulus and the 3.8 million jobs that have been lost since the stimulus was passed in February.” 

“Our complex tax structure puts unproductive obstacles in front of entrepreneurs—the people who create wealth and will lead this country out of the recession we are in.  It is entrepreneurs who create the meaningful jobs that the American people want.”

Prior to joining Congress, Armey was an economics professor and has a Ph.D in economics.