U.S. Rep. John Tanner speaks on economic recovery

U.S. Rep. John Tanner said in a district-wide radio address that the current economic crisis is negatively impacting thousands of 8th District families and that Congressional action is necessary to help economic recovery. The House Friday passed the final version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act with Congressman Tanner’s support. This is a transcript of his radio broadcast:

This is John Tanner. I wanted to talk to you a minute about this recovery act that was voted on in the House. This is truly a very, very hard vote for me, given my record of financial responsibility, and trying to do what I can with the other Blue Dogs here and others about the financial unsustainability of our federal government. I think this is an economic crisis that I have not seen in my 60+ years. The recession is far deeper and wider than any that I have ever lived through or witnessed, probably since the Great Depression.

The numbers are grim. There are 3.6 million people in this country out of work since the downturn started about 13 months ago. In our district here in Tennessee, over 6,000 workers have been laid off in the last 13 months. Many of our small businesses are closing or having severe financial struggles. There are eight counties in our Congressional district that have unemployment rates above 10%.

These are not just numbers. These are families and people that are directly and adversely, sometimes irreversibly, affected negatively by this.

Most reputable economists across the board, from the right to the left, to all in between, have said that the government needs to act and that inaction is really not an option if we are going to break this deflationary cycle that we are in.

There are several things about this bill that I, quite frankly, wouldn’t have written, but there are some good things in it. Ninety-five percent of the people in our district will receive a tax cut. That will put money in their pockets and hopefully spur some economic recovery. It’s been estimated that there will be somewhere between 7,500 and 8,000 private-sector jobs created in our Congressional district. Hopefully, that will put some of people who have been laid off back to work.

I have talked with our constituents and our neighbors often about the grave consequences of our growing national debt, particularly the money we have borrowed from foreign lenders over the last eight years. Because of all this, it wasn’t easy for me to take this vote that so dramatically will add to this deficit. But I worry that if we don’t start turning the economy around and get economic activity once again started, that the country will continue this deflationary downward spiral with really no end or bottom in sight.

I think by building roads, schools, hospitals and so forth here, rather than in some of the other places we’ve been doing it – like Iraq – in the past eight years, we need this opportunity to invest in our country and in Tennessee again.

It is my hope that this will begin to turn the recessionary deflationary cycle around and create a sustainable path that we can then continue to worry and do something about the financial long-term challenges that our country faces.

I had a bill a couple weeks ago that demands that Congress has a systematic review on waste, fraud and abuse. If programs that have already passed are wasting money or are not performing as they were intended, they need to be cut out. If we have abuse of programs, we need to stop that. And, of course, anywhere there’s fraud, we want to see prosecution take place or ensue from that.

I just don’t think that inaction right now is going to stop this deflationary spiral. Again, I would not have written the bill as it was, but, on balance, even though there are some things in there I don’t agree with, inaction is just not a very attractive alternative right now.

The economic situation is deteriorating almost daily. Anybody who watches the newscasts at night knows that. People are continuing to be laid off. Small businesses are having trouble making payroll, and some of them are closing their doors.

This injection, as large as it is, into our economy, hopefully will turn that around. We cannot do anything about the long-term fiscal burden that we are placing on our country and those who come after us until we get the economic system either stabilized or turned around, and it is my hope that this bill will do that.

Tanner, a founding member of the fiscally conservative  represents Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District in West and Middle Tennessee. He serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, where he chairs the Subcommittee on Social Security. Tanner also serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and as President of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.