I think the people on the panel did an excellent job in preparation. I read through all of the testimony beforehand, and I was particularly interested in the various opinions about infrastructure investment, particularly from the gentleman from American Enterprise.

I’m concerned on two levels: number one, the stimulus package; whether it’s effective and whether it’s timely, because from what I can see as of last night, the president made some statements yesterday and Nancy Pelosi made some statements last week, I’m very concerned that part of that $700 billion dollars which is now in the hands of banks, is simply being used to buy other banks, not to get money out there to stimulate loans to people, lend to people. That is simply not happening.

I think not only that Paulson is not doing his job, which he cannot catch up on later, you either do it from the beginning or you don’t. Having said that, I think you need to look at a second stimulus package. We need to make sure we implement the first one as we intended and second, have a stimulus package that deals with infrastructure. We have projects that are ready to go, we don’t have to wait, they will be timely, they will get done. We have to act between now and September 17. Whether we will do that or not, I don’t know.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 31st, 2008 at 9:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized .