Norton Says Action on the House-Passed Stimulus Bill Would Help Save the Bailout (9-29-08)

Norton Says Action on the House-Passed Stimulus Bill Would Help Save the Bailout

September 29, 2008

Washington, D.C. - As the market plunged, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said Congress cannot go home without stabilizing the markets and coming to the Floor with a new bill. “I received hundreds of e-mails and phone calls, overwhelmingly opposed to the plan Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson proposed. Today, Americans continued to see the benefit to Wall Street but not to themselves, notwithstanding many improvements to the original bill. They did not see their own pension funds, mutual funds, and 401Ks that dominate today’s Wall Street, nor the harm the markets are inflicting on the value of their homes, the primary asset of most Americans,” Norton said. From the beginning, she strongly believed that the bill had a more than even chance of going down. The bailout would have stood a better chance, she said, if the stimulus package that she had been pressing for months had passed in the Senate, as it did in the House on Friday.

“Paulson rushed forward to forestall a collapse of the financial and credit sectors, but Congress has not taken comparable action to fuel the economy where most Americans work, spend, and need money,” Norton said. “A stimulus that has to be spent state-side would have immediate effects on people and their pocketbooks, and therefore on their view of congressional action to save the top of the economy.” She cited ready-to-go transportation and infrastructure projects that have a well-known ripple effect, creating jobs throughout many sectors of the economy, and other spending that simultaneously benefits the economy and individuals in need, such as unemployment insurance and food stamps. Unemployment claims have increased six straight months. Norton said, “Congress forgot the history of the 1930s that shows that the economy did not respond for several years after Roosevelt succeeded in calming the markets, only when the economy was stimulated sufficiently to put people back to work. The American people, however, have not forgotten.”