Doris Matsui: “the whole basis of this Bush tax cut which ultimately will be $1.6 trillion, maybe $2 trillion or $3 trillion, when it…”

“the whole basis of this Bush tax cut which ultimately will be $1.6 trillion, maybe $2 trillion or $3 trillion, when it is finished, no one knows what the total amount will be, the whole basis of this tax cut is based upon surplus projections over the next 10 years from the Congressional Surplus Budget Office that does estimates. In the document that said that we will have $5.6 trillion, the Congressional Budget Office also said that there is only a 50 percent probability that the 5-year projections will be correct, and they say in the 10-year projections they cannot even assess whether or not they will occur because they have no experience at it. If you take away the fact that these projections are kind of guesswork, like whether the weather, in fact, will have snow next week or last week, and maybe it did not, then if you take away that, the whole basis of this tax cut then becomes illusionary, and that means if it does not happen, we are going to have to cut health care benefits.”