This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” March 11, 2009. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
SEAN HANNITY, HOST: And in “Your America” tonight, another economic plan is also emerging tonight. The Republicans have proposed an alternative to the president’s $787 billion stimulus package, and it costs a little bit less. Zero dollars. And it also promises to create two million new jobs without any of your money.
Joining us Congressman John Shadegg and Senator David Vitter. They’re here to explain.
All right. Now we keep hearing from the Democrats well, the Republicans, they need to — they need an alternative proposal. You have an alternative proposal.
Congressman Shadegg, we’ll start with you.
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JOHN SHADEGG (R), ARIZONA CONGRESSMAN: We do have an alternative proposal. It looks at the fact that we spent billions of dollars on this stimulus package taxing the American people and burdening future generations with little to show for it. And many of us believe it will not produce Americans jobs.
With unemployment rates going up how can we produce American jobs? And the answer is we have had a non-energy policy in this country for a very long time. The reality is we are giving jobs to oil fieldworkers and natural gas fieldworkers in Russia and Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, when we should be putting those people to work here in the United States.
HANNITY: Right.
SHADEGG: Now Senator Vitter and I have drafted a bill that says let’s put Americans to work, let’s pursue the fight we had last summer of an all of the above energy strategy, let’s clear the bureaucracy out of the way, and let’s move forward with American jobs, producing American energy.
HANNITY: Senator Vitter, I’ll go to you.
DAVID VITTER (R), LOUISIANA SENATOR: Sure.
HANNITY: How does this happen, especially where Nancy Pelosi suggesting she may even be open to a second stimulus bill before the first stimulus bill.
VITTER: Right.
HANNITY: … even had a chance to work.
VITTER: Right.
HANNITY: How do you do this when this stimulus bill already has passed?
VITTER: Well, the timing is perfect. She’s pretty much admitting that this stimulus bill is not going to be enough to really revive the economy and get us on the road to recovery, and it just so happened that we were introducing our plan today, so the timing was perfect.
I do think we’re going to have to do more things that really work in terms of job creation. This bill is one way to do it at zero cost by focusing on energy. This bill fundamentally says two things.
First we can grow jobs without just dropping trillions of dollars of hard-earned taxpayer money out of air planes, and secondly we need to break out of this stale debate in Washington on energy that’s either or, either oil and gas or renewables. We need to do both, we need to do all of the above. This bill does that.
HANNITY: Congressman, I don’t have any confidence that they have a clue what they’re doing. I have zero confidence in Timothy Geithner as our treasury secretary. We still don’t even have a plan yet to bail out the banks here, but we just seem to be just throwing money and scaring the death out of the American people, TARP 1, 2, stimulus, omnibus. Now stimulus 2 perhaps.
It seems to me that somebody needs to stand back and count the money, and on top of that the 2010 budget could be $4 trillion.
SHADEGG: I think the American people are saying enough is enough. They’re sick of spending, they’re sick of having to pick up the tab for this, and they want jobs, the jobless rate just went up in America. I think you have to answer if you’re a policy maker how is it that we continue to pursue policies on energy that export American jobs.
You know we talk about outsourcing American jobs as being bad for our economy. Even the president mentioned that issue of corporations that send jobs overseas in his address to Congress, and yet in the energy field we are sending jobs outside this country.
The known reserves of natural gas have doubled in the last five years here in the United States. Let’s produce that energy here.
HANNITY: Look, I’ve been a big proponent of drilling, refineries, nuclear, coal mining, and I’m an all of the above guy. I think we’ve got to — we’ve got to do everything because OPEC gets to set the price. It is the lifeblood of our economy.
I guess the question, gentlemen, you’re in two chambers now, and everything that Barack Obama has wanted he’s successfully been able to accomplish. We keep hearing talk that there is some skittishness, 49 blue dogs, a couple of senators now, Democrats, Russ Feingold, Evan Bayh, seem to be skittish.
Is there any way that you can literally stop this train from going down the tracks of mortgaging our children and grandchildren’s future?
Senator?
VITTER: We can’t allow him but we sure as heck can with the help of the American people, and I think the ground is shifting, Sean. I’ve done about 15 town hall meetings in the last two weeks. The tone at every single one of those town halls was not I’m scared, I’m anxious, I’m concerned, I disagree with this. It was, with regard to these Obama policies, I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.
SHADEGG: You said.
VITTER: I feel that ground shifting.
SHADEGG: You said it earlier. It appears they don’t have a plan, they don’t know what they’re doing, none of this seems to work. The market continues to spiral down, the American people can change the Congress and what it does, and they can scare the Democrats and this Congress away from pursuing bad policies and in to pursuing good policies if we put out a good idea.
We’re not the policy of no. This is the policy we proffered last year on the energy fight. We can give Americans jobs rather than shipping those energy jobs overseas. And we can also reduce the absurd.
HANNITY: All right. Last question.
SHADEGG: … regulations that go way too far.
HANNITY: Is there any openness from the president to sit down and talk to you guys about this because Nancy Pelosi shut things down in the House, Congressman?
SHADEGG: I think from him what we’re going to get is rhetoric. On health care he’s saying he’s including everybody, and he clearly didn’t include everybody. I don’t think this is what they want to do on energy, but he is the president of the United States of America.
This is a democracy, this is a nation where we can put pressure where members of Congress will respond.
HANNITY: Yes.
VITTER: And we will make that happen.
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: We actually do have equal branches of government. And I think some people have forgotten that.
VITTER: Right.
HANNITY: And — but, aright, guys.
SHADEGG: They have forgotten, right?
HANNITY: Keep up the dialogue because certainly we’re mortgaging our kids’ future, and these are very perilous times. So thank you both for being with us.
SHADEGG: They are indeed.
VITTER: Thanks, Sean.
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