The tax program before the Senate is unfair to middle income Americans, it is economically unwise and it's based on unrealistic assumptions. In addition to being unfair, it is economically unwise in that jeopardizes Medicare, fails to strengthen Social Security, and risks higher interest rates. This bill takes us back to the bad old days of backloaded tax breaks whose real costs explode several years after enactment. This budgetary time bomb is set go off at roughly the same time as the Medicare trust fund is expected to be bankrupt and the bill begins to come due for Social Security. It is also based on unrealistic projections.
Projections are always risky.
We have seen many federal budget estimates, and we know well that as quickly as these surpluses appeared, they could disappear. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan introduced his Economic Recovery Tax Act which included huge tax cuts and predictions that the budget would be balanced by 1984. In 1981, I opposed the Reagan tax cut because I was convinced that it would lead to huge deficits. We have paid dearly for the debt which resulted from that legislation. The remarkable progress which has brought us now to the threshold of surpluses has come about in large part as a result of the deficit reduction package which President Clinton presented in 1993, and which this Senate passed by a margin of one vote, the Vice-President's.