December 16, 2009 Republican Leadership Conference

December 16, 2009 Republican Leadership Conference

DECEMBER 16, 2009

Republican Leadership Press Conference

December 16, 2009

Participants:
- Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH)
- Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA)
- Conference Chair Mike Pence (R-IN)
- Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN)
- Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)

Multimedia: 
 Audio 

Transcript:

Conference Chair Mike Pence

Welcome all.  We just completed our second meeting of the House Republican Conference this week, and I must say House Republicans are disappointed with the lack of leadership by Democrats in Congress and this administration.  What we see is Democrats in Washington D.C. are gettin while the gettin's good.  Getting out of town by refusing to make the hard choices necessary to protect our country with a meaningful extension of the Patriot Act or to make the hard choices to put our fiscal house in order without expanding the national debt on even a short-term basis by hundreds of billions of dollars. 

Back in Muncie, Indiana, I can tell you, people are sitting down at kitchen tables and making the tough choices to put their fiscal house in order and look after their family as this year comes to a close.  But in Washington, D.C. we see Democrats punting on all of those issues just in a headlong rush to get out of Washington, D.C., and it's a disappointment to millions of Americans.  And the worst extension of all by the Democrats is an extension of the failed economic policies of this administration and this Congress.  Democrats in this new stimulus bill are simply voting to extend policies that have failed to create jobs, failed to get the American economy back on its feet. 

House Republicans know and the American people know how we can get this economy moving again, and that's fiscal discipline in Washington, D.C., and fast-acting tax relief for working families, small businesses and family farms.  We'll carry that message home, and after the Christmas holiday break and the New Year, Republicans will return to Capitol Hill to fight to make the hard choices to put our economy and the interest of our nation first.

 

Rep. Marsha Blackburn

I'm Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee. And we're going to be heading to Copenhagen. There are a few Republicans that will be in the delegation and we have a message that we will carry on behalf of our constituents and millions of Americans that are opposed to this cap and trade agreement and opposed to a national energy tax. We Republicans are all for clean air, clean water and clean energy. We are not for taxing people out of house and home to pay for it. We truly believe that we as a nation need more diverse energy sources. We think that requires innovation, it requires incentives and it requires an all of the above energy strategy that our Republican leadership has been talking about for a couple of years now. We are committed to that. We are committed to making certain that we address our energy needs in a proactive way.


Republican Whip Eric Cantor

As we face this final day of the session for the year. It's fair to say House Republicans are very concerned and troubled by the direction this majority has chosen to take, specifically relating to the challenges that American families face and are discussing around their kitchen tables every day.

There is a disconnect, a kitchen table disconnect, with what's going on and being proposed here in Washington by this administration and this majority and what's on the minds of Americans. It's about getting people back to work it's not about jetting off to propose support for cap and trade policies. It is about trying to tightening our belt, not continuing to spend money we don't have.

Today, we are going to see the arrival on the floor of a "son of stimulus" bill. This is the same model that the majority and president took earlier this year when they passed a nearly $800 billion stimulus bill. It funds the same types of projects and the same categories of expenditures that were funded under the prior bill, and in many instances, less than 20 percent of the monies spent - or called for - in that bill haven't even been spent the first time. And now they are increasing those accounts.

I think a glaring addition to this stimulus bill is the housing slush fund that has been proposed by Barney Frank. In that fund there is a billion dollars spent and in fact, it is now revealed that ACORN can receive money under this slush fund. Again, this is not what the American people want.

Lastly, they are doubling down, not only are they pursuing the same stimulus policy, but they have now said it's ok to use TARP to fund more of their spendthrift ways. We cannot afford this as a country - this does not help get Americans back to work.

 

Rep. Cynthia Lummis

I'm Cynthia Lummis from Wyoming and while people in Wyoming are waiting for spring so they can go back to work in the energy fields, we're busy as a Congress and the president is busy trying to make sure that they don't have jobs to go back to and he's doing it in Copenhagen and he's going to do it through his command and control structure that will make it so Americans don't have jobs and energy. What we should be doing is not cajoling the Chinese into going along with us, with a big command and control structure to change the way that energy is produced in this world.

We should be saying ‘we'll buy environmental technology for you and install it on your coal-fired power plants and you will forgive our debt for doing so' but instead of creating American jobs to improve the environment for the whole globe and help China pull itself up, we're going to make sure that you don't produce oil and gas in America, that we don't solve the global environmental issues, and that we don't have jobs in America. Republicans at the beginning of this year proposed a stimulus bill that would create twice as many jobs at half the cost and at the end of this year, the only thing that Democrats have to show for themselves is a trillion dollar stimulus bill that doesn't work. Next year needs to be a different year, next year needs to be a year where Republican ideas are on the table and not ignored by the majority party.

 

Republican Leader John Boehner


It's been a long year for the American people.  We've seen American families and small businesses struggling all year in a very difficult economy, and all they've gotten from Democrats here in Washington is more spending and more debt piled on the backs of their kids and grandkids.  But the American people are asking, "Where are the jobs?"

When you begin to look at the policies being outlined by this administration, it's not just all the spending and the debt, it's this national energy tax which will kill jobs in America and ship them overseas.  It's their government takeover of health care that will cause a lot of employers to drop their health care plans, but we're going to raise the cost of employment, and as a result we're not creating jobs.

I think Republicans have offered better solutions all year long, whether it was the stimulus bill, the budget that had a lot less spending and a lot less debt, whether it was the energy bill where our all of the above American energy bill really will give us cleaner air and cheaper energy and more energy.  But our proposal on health care was a common sense way of making our current system work better, bringing down cost not increasing the cost of health care like the Democrat proposals. Our better solutions are going to continue to be brought out day after day, because the American people are looking for common sense solutions to deal with the problems that they face every day, and I believe that Republicans have been responsible in offering those policies all year, and we will continue to do so in the new year.