Rehberg urges restraint at Lake Co. talk

The Lake County Republican Women's Club hosted a special meeting earlier this month at Camp Marshall, near Big Arm, during which Congressman Denny Rehberg served as the keynote speaker.

Rehberg, now in his fifth term, had plenty to say about the $787 billion stimulus bill approved by Congress. He said only 12 cents out of every dollar will go toward things that can actually stimulate the economy. He added that, while he's not against some of the programs included in the package, he felt that many of them have nothing to do with jump-starting the economy.

Rehberg decried the 1,042 page stimulus bill, stressing that he and other legislators were given just 10 hours to read and discuss the document before voting on it. That, he added, amounted to reading and discussing essentially two pages of the document per minute.

"We're looking at a $13 trillion debt in this country," Rehberg said. "Somebody's got to pay it back, and it's us. If we think we can spend our way into prosperity, we're in for some pretty tough times in this country."

Rehberg admitted that Republicans are "in the penalty box" at the present because of the failed economic policies of the past, adding that Republicans must reinforce core values as well as reassert their philosophy and practice of "giving a hand up, not a hand-out"

"We need to rebuild our credibility as legislators," Rehberg said.

Part of that, he said, means keeping government out of the solution rather than thinking that government intervention is the solution.

He also referred to the current status of Medicare and Social Security, which he described as "entitlements that are going broke." Thus, he felt it incumbent upon legislators to find a solution as quickly as possible.

"We need bipartisan restraint," Rehberg insisted. "We need to slow down. We need to regroup, and we need to decide what we want America to look like."

Later in the week, Rehberg conducted a followup interview with the Eagle in which he said that small businesses will be the key to economic recovery.

"If you really want to get economic development, one of the major employers out there is Semitool," Rehberg said. "The question is, 'How does (the) so-called stimulus package help keep Semitool going?' They don't happen to be a highway construction program or a water treatment facility, and yet they are a major part of your economy in that community, and when they're under stress it shows."

Rather than what he referred to as a government-control, government-spending solution, which he did not believe would truly help Americans or bolster the weakening economy, Rehberg called for an aggressive initiative to provide permanent tax relief—particularly, to small businesses and families—as the only proven way to stimulate both the local and national economy.

"Let's not forget that there is a difference between a job and a career," he said. "If you spend $10 million on a bridge project in Flathead County, the construction company comes in and uses their employees or other employees to build that bridge, but when that $10 million is gone, that job may be gone, unless there's another source of income behind it to build the next bridge and the next bridge."

At a more local level, Rehberg said Montana's taxes can be kept down at the state level because of a constitutional requirement that does not exist at the federal level: a balanced budget. Without such a requirement, the federal government does not have to match expenditures with revenues and can go on spending indefinitely and collect revenues later in the form of new taxes, once economic pressure demands it.

"We're creating debt," Rehberg said, "and ultimately the debt is going to have to be paid for."

However, Rehberg stressed that all hope is not lost—that is, as long as Americans learn to demand real solutions and bipartisan restraint from their representatives.

"The Congress will only restrain itself in voting for more spending if the public rises up and says 'Enough is enough,'" Rehberg said. "What stimulates the economy is not government spending on programs we'd like to have, it's bipartisan restraint and trying to slow down our spending."