(Washington, D.C.) – The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) today urged members of Congress to take this last opportunity to protect current and future taxpayers by voting against the $789 billion economic recovery bill.

“This is an historic vote,” said CCAGW President Tom Schatz.  “Members of Congress who vote in favor of this pork-laden bill will saddle future generations with a crushing debt burden and create gigantic new state and federal bureaucracies, which lays the groundwork for massive tax hikes to support them,” said CCAGW President Tom Schatz.  “The compromise bill yielded little improvement for taxpayers.  In exchange for a paltry extra $13 a week in tax relief, Congress is saddling American families with thousands of dollars a month in new spending obligations and huge interest payments on the national debt going forward indefinitely.”

"There were other, more rational alternatives which offered meaningful tax and relief to American families, tax and regulatory relief to American businesses, as well as creating a systematic and thoughtful process for allocating spending for infrastructure projects to create jobs.  There are hundreds of billions of tax dollars going to waste every year on unnecessary, mismanaged programs and no effort was made to eliminate or reform any of them.  Instead, the Democratic majority saw an opening and used the crisis to increase funding for self-serving, dubious projects and programs, as well as make far-reaching public policy changes without meaningful and open debate.  They are going to pump even more taxpayer money down the same rat hole and call it economic relief.  We urge members of Congress to stand up for taxpayers and vote against this bill,” concluded Schatz.

CCAGW is the lobbying arm of Citizens Against Government Waste, the nation’s largest nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government.