Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I will tell you this: Mr. Green also can sing, and he is one of those I consider a friend. He and I have done a number of pieces of legislation, and he and I have a running discussion of what actually helps the working poor. We have different views, but we know we both have a passion of it. Mr. Speaker, let's actually take sort of the theme that has been offered here. I believe it is absolutely mathematically wrong, but an argument that, Hey, so much of this has helped the wealthy in tax reform and those things. Great. Mr. Speaker, if someone on the Democratic side can promise me that when I am looking at this budget resolution, this is not creating a policy box for the Committee on Ways and Means to turn around and re-implement policy where, functionally, the benefit goes mostly to the very, very wealthy. So when I see the box here that looks like it would allow for certain revenues to be raised, and then it goes to possibly a SALT--a State and local tax deduction, which we all know the top 1 percent gets 57 percent of the value of it, the bottom 80 percent of our society only gets 4 percent of the value--that would be, actually, a tax break. Actually, I think I have been quoted as saying, ``It is the most regressive tax break that you can think of in our society right now that is in play.'' I am just desperately hoping that isn't what I am reading in some of these pages as part of that setup.…”