Date: 2006-07-25
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

I am so glad that you highlighted that because the fiscal irresponsibility is startling. and so often it is difficult for us to quantify or physically represent what the impact is of the fiscally irresponsible decisions that are. going on here. and we are not just making this stuff up ourselves. Mr. MEEK is absolutely right. The three of us were State legislators. We worked every day to balance our State budgets. States cannot operate in the red like the Federal Government can. The Federal Government can deficit spend. That is not possible at the State level. So. when we pass down a tax cut. it means that there is less revenue available at the State level in the programs that they are counting on those Federal dollars to fund. and so they have the devolution of the tax cuts. Look. it is so often the Republicans talk about how they make these references to taxandspend liberals. Well. not only as you have talked about are they borrowandspend .Republicans. but they also have refused to acknowledge that tax cuts are another form of spending. I mean. they are adopting irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthiest few. It would be one thing if they were passing tax cuts on to middle class working families. They are passing tax cuts that add to the deficit for the wealthiest few. Let us just go over some opinions and some reality that is being offered out there as far as what third party validators have to say about their irresponsible spending. Here is a USA Today editorial from February 21. 2006. of this year. The title of it is. "Whos spending big now? The party of small government." and USA Today said. "Tax cuts. they say. force hard decisions and restrain reckless spending. The last time we looked. though. Republicans controlled both Congress and the White House. They are the spenders. In fact. since they took control in 2001. they have increased spending by an average of nearly 7.5 percent a year. more than double the rate in the last 5 years of Clintonera budgets." Now. what kind of an impact are we talking about on real people? The tax cut reconciliation package that we passed out of this Chamber a couple of months ago. let us see who that helps because one would think that the purpose of a tax cut is to just give tax dollars back to the average person. Does the tax cut bill do that? Well. let us take a look at the evidence because the average amount that an American would get back. based on income from the 2006 tax cut bill passed by the Republicans. looks like this. If you make between $10.000 and $20.000 a year. you get enough back from that tax cut bill to buy a Slurpee. If you make between $40.000 and let us say $50.000 a year. you get enough back just about. because it is continuing to increase. to buy a gallon of gas. not a tank. mind you. a gallon of gas. which is about three bucks. And if you make more than $1 million. you did okay in the tax cut bill. You get enough to buy a Hummer. There is a slight discrepancy here. It is really pretty startling. Now. when we are talking about the billions. with a B. that the tax cut bill cost. again. it is hard to illustrate for folks what the kind of numbers and immensity. enormity of what we deal with here every day really means. So how much is a billion just so people can wrap their minds around it? Well. a billion hours ago. humans were making their first tools in the Stone Age. To quantify it further. a. billion seconds ago. it was 1975 and the last American troops had pulled out of Vietnam. A billion minutes ago. it was 104 A.D.. and the Chinese had first invented paper. But under the Republicans. $1 billion ago was only 3 hours and 32 minutes at the rate that the government spends money under this Republican leadership. That is just to help people understand what is really going on here. who is for fiscal responsibility and who is just a lot of talk.