Mike Levin: “it is ironic that on the same day that the Republican majority passed a huge tax cut package that will cost, without the…”

“it is ironic that on the same day that the Republican majority passed a huge tax cut package that will cost, without the gimmicks, up to a trillion dollars over the next 10 years, they also are asking us to raise the limit on the national debt by $984 billion, which would be the largest increase in our Nation's history. Just 2 years ago, the President asserted that passage of his massive $1.4 trillion in tax cuts would still allow us to eliminate our publicly held debt by 2008. Under the budget resolution that was passed recently, it's estimated that our publicly held debt will be over $5 trillion by 2008. So, under this Administration's fiscal policies, we have gone from an estimate of zero in publicly held debt in 2008 to an estimate over $5 trillion in publicly held debt in 2008. That's an astounding reversal by any measure. The President also said that his past tax cuts would create jobs. That doesn't jibe with the fact that we've lost 2.7 million private sector jobs since President Bush took office, many of those since his last tax program was adopted. We need to increase the debt limit, but we need to do it in a fiscally responsible way. Instead of increasing it by a trillion dollars, let's make the increase more reasonable, like the $350 billion increase that Senator Baucus is advocating.”