Political Quotes

“Joint Tax ought to backtrack. They were flat wrong. They said maybe $200 billion will come back, and $360 billion came back. They said we would lose money. We wound up with $16 billion added to the Treasury. So it is very easy to demagog. It is very easy. But my friend has it wrong. Then my friend says that effectively the corporate rate is only 17 percent. Well, if that is true, then this is less of a tax break than he is making it out to be. You cannot have it both ways and say, look at this giant tax break and then say the effective rate is 17 percent. I suggest to my friend, as he went through the phone book in his State, thank goodness, because of the work of this Congress, people in the $40,000 to $50,000 range don't pay any taxes. I will tell you something. I am rarely standing up here and saying a tax cut to the business community is stimulative. But this one is, because it was stimulative. We have it right here from Robert Shapiro, who worked for Bill Clinton. He said that jobs saved or created were 1.6 million from the last tax break. So my friends come here and quote Joint Tax as if we have to say they are right, when they were wrong-- just wrong--wrong on estimating what would come back, wrong on estimating what would come into the Treasury. If you read these economists, whom I have heard colleagues on this side quote constantly--Laura Tyson, Alan Sinai, and Robert Shapiro--they are saying how to stimulate the economy, and this is one way to do it.”