Doris Matsui: “So far, in the last 6 months, my Republican colleagues, in all of their tax bills that they have gotten through the…”

“So far, in the last 6 months, my Republican colleagues, in all of their tax bills that they have gotten through the House of Representatives, basically have spent $739 billion, almost $1 trillion if we count the debt service that goes with this. The breakdown of these tax cuts is if one makes $350,000 a year, one will be getting about $15,000 annually on these tax cuts. If one makes $40,000 a year, which most Americans do, that average tax cut will be about $350 per year. So everybody gets a little, but we know the wealthy are going to get tremendous tax breaks out of this. Now, what this bill does, basically, is reduces the amount of taxation on Social Security benefits. The problem with this, the problem with this bill is that all of the revenues from this goes into the Medicare trust fund. Now, the Republicans are saying, well, they are going to make this up with the budget surplus, and all of us have heard that we are going to have over the next 10 years about $2.2 trillion in budget surpluses outside of the Social Security system. The problem is that my colleagues, our Republican friends, have spent that money already.”