Conngressman Buck McKeon talked down the Senate/House Stimulus plan, talked up car dealership help and tax cuts for small businesses, and spoke about President Obama yesterday in an interview with RTTNews.com.
In the wide-ranging 16 minute interview with the right-leaning financial news website, McKeon laid bare his doubts about the stimulus plan, saying simply that if he had to vote on the final bill today, he’d vote no.
“I guess my question is, where? What jobs? I don’t know of any jobs that it creates in the private sector,” McKeon said of the President’s claim that his plan would create or save 4 million jobs.
In the interview, McKeon emphasized the troubles car dealers are having in the current economy.
“My car dealers are dying on the vine at home. If they would just do something to help them out a little bit,” he said referring to Congress and the stimulus plan. He then mentioned that one city in his district is “going to give out vouchers to people that buy a car in their city.” SCVTalk confirmed that that the city McKeon is referring to is not the City of Santa Clarita.
Other tidbits from the interview, which you can listen to here:
- McKeon equated the tax cuts on low-income people to welfare payments
- He echoed Rush Limbaugh’s Wall Street Journal editorial in calling for Republicans to construct 40 percent of the stimulus plan and Democrats to construct 60 percent of the plan
- When asked what the federal government could do to help people who find themselves unemployed, McKeon stated that the “best thing you can do for them is to help small businesses who create half the jobs.”
- McKeon also claimed that the Republican alternative to the President’s and the Democrat’s plan “created twice as many jobs at half the cost.”
- Overall, he said, the plan “seems overly big to me.”
- McKeon said of the plan’s cost, “I have 29 grandchildren, one more coming in May, and they’ll be paying for this for a long long time.”
McKeon saved some for the President too. To borrow that tired phrase from Campaign 2008, he accused the President of being a show horse rather than a workhorse , saying that the President’s visit to House Republicans last week amounted to little more than a social gathering.
“I’ve never claimed to be a Puritan on bipartisanship. He came and talked to us, and I give him credit for that. But you know, I can go out, and I have good friends, and we can go and play golf together, and we can have dinner together, and we have discussions together,” McKeon said.
Image Courtesy of Flickr
McKeon also doubted the President’s claim that a “crisis could turn into a catastrophe” if the stimulus bill failed to pass this week.
“I was told a few months ago that when we had to do the $700 billion that the end of the world was coming if we didn’t do it right away, so we did it. The world didn’t end, and they still haven’t done what they said they would do,” McKeon said of the $700 billion TARP package, which he voted yes on.
McKeon acknowledged that the stimulus bill might save public sector jobs, but said that that wouldn’t be enough to get the economy rolling again.
“We’re going to keep teachers working, firemen working, anyone in public sector jobs represented by unions, they’re getting a good chunk of this. But I don’t think that’s going to stimulate the economy.”
The President has noted that his plan creates or saves 4 million jobs, and local school districts have said a federal stimulus package might prevent layoffs that affect classrooms.