Xavier Becerra: “Mr. Speaker, the difficulty with this debate is that there is a big monster in the closet that people do not want to…”

“Mr. Speaker, the difficulty with this debate is that there is a big monster in the closet that people do not want to discuss, and that is the growing national deficit, which is going to make it impossible for us to ever do the type of investments in our education, in our housing, health care for seniors and others that we need to do. It certainly will stop us from doing things the right way in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, around the world where the United States must stand up to defend the rights of others and protect Americans, and certainly we are not doing the right thing for at least some 13 million Americans under this particular bill when it comes to the so-called marriage penalty relief because they will get a benefit, because what is not being said, because of that big monster in the closet is that a lot of these folks, 10 million directly, outright, will lose any type of relief from this legislation because they will fall into another tax category.”