Opposition Builds to Senate Stimulus Bill

Washington, D.C., February 4, 2008—Today the Competitive
Enterprise Institute and a coalition of over a dozen public interest groups
sent an open letter to Members of the
U.S. Senate urging them to reject the trillion-dollar economic “stimulus”
legislation currently under consideration. 

“President Obama asked for a change in the way Congress
does business, and what Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have given him is a colossal dose of the same old
wasteful government spending,” said Myron Ebell, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Director of Energy Policy. “The Senate Democratic leadership’s so-called
stimulus package will do little or nothing to stimulate the economy.  It is a collection of wasteful pork-barrel
spending proposals that have been around for years.” 

The astronomical growth of government spending this
legislation would create – coupled with loosened monetary policy – will discourage
investment and savings and lead to higher interest, tax and inflation rates. It
will destroy private sector jobs and further delay any hope for a nationwide
economic recovery.

“Most of these pet spending
projects would be laughed off the Senate floor if debated separately so the
public could see what their money was being wasted on,” said Ebell. “Instead of
wasting hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, the Congress should
look at proposals to stimulate the economy and create jobs by liberating it
from obsolete regulations and red tape.” 

CEI is a non-profit, non-partisan
public policy group dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited
government.  For more information about
CEI, please visit our website at www.cei.org.